Earthquake in Kobe – A Natural Disaster Waiting to Happen

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h/w                                                                   Saturday, 05 October 2002

Earthquake in Kobe – A Natural Disaster Waiting to Happen

Introduction

It all happened on the morning of January the 17th 1995, the second most populated and industrialized city in one of the biggest economies of the world, was struck by a powerful earthquake causing thousands of injuries and hundreds of deaths. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

        Situated in the south-central region of Japan, Kobe was the second largest city in Japan people and industrial-wise, after Tokyo. It was the biggest earthquake to hit Japan, after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, where around 140,000 people were killed, most after the impact. The strong shock occurred across the fault that runs through the city of Kobe, and the Awaji island.

The earthquake lasted for around 20 seconds, with around 5,500 deaths resulting from it. The number of injuries reached about 35,000 in total, and nearly 180,000 buildings were said to have collapsed. The damage was recorded over a radius of 100 km from the epicentre. The earthquake also hit the cities of Osaka and Kyoto.

The economic loss was worse than anything. It was the largest ever to be lost directly from a natural disaster. Directly from the shaking itself, around 13 trillion yen worth of damage was caused. This is around £100 billion and before, the loss of life, production, and business interruptions.

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The Destruction

The amount of destruction left by the earthquake was enormous. Around one in every five building collapsed. A further eighty thousand were badly damaged. The fires that followed the earthquake were even worse, causing more damage. The Kobe businesses district was made of many buildings around 6 to 12 stories high, and these were all structurally damaged. Most collapses were towards the north, which was evidently the result of a long-period velocity pulse perpendicular to the fault.

Around 4% of Japan’s industry is located in the area of the severe ground shaking in and around Kobe. ...

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The punctuation is questionable in this piece of work - I found the use of commas and colons are regular feature in this piece of work (i.e. perhaps it was used excessively in places). However, the grammar and spelling are fine. The writer could have included a glossary of terms such that they can further demonstrate their knowledge of the topic (such as defining epicentre). The student follows the typical layout expected and writes adequately to gain high marks for their piece of work.

The student shows excellent analytical skills throughout the piece of work for the consequences of the Kobe Earthquake, yet they seem to lack it in other areas to do with Kobe. This perhaps means that the piece of work cannot score the potential marks the student is capable of. Students must remember to address the entire question and balance their entire piece of work out such that nothing should immediately have more weighting (unless dictated by the question itself). Their judgements were evaluative, but for a piece of work on earthquakes, I would suggest looking further outside the question set and perhaps stating some of the positive preventions that Japan has now adopted after the earthquake as a consequence of Kobe (such as Earthquake Day, along with earthquake drills which are equivalent to the fire drills that we do regularly at school for example). Such further exploration of the question will set a high level student from a lower level one. The pictures included in the piece of work are not sourced - this is not advised as one could be accused of plagiarism. Students must be aware to cite / source all works used in their piece of work. Also the alignment of the pictures meant that it was hard to read the piece of work - this means the examiner has to spend more time searching for the answers as the picture hinders the clarity of the piece of work (yet the formatting might be due to the incompatibility of the software I'm using compared to the student's).

The candidate obviously has a clear understanding of the consequences of the earthquake, but (I have to admit the title does not specify) the lack of description of why the earthquake occurred seemed to be lacking (i.e. due to the movement of tectonic plates). The question of 'inevitability' doesn't seem to be addressed. The student addresses the wider picture of the entire earthquake along with the consequences but does not address the issue of inevitability - whether or not the earthquake was really 'waiting to happen'. A conclusion would also have strengthened their argument for the piece of work. However, their introduction was strong and very good.