Kobe Earthquake Case Study

Great Hanshin / Kobe temblor In the early of January 17th in 1995 at 546pm, while many were still sleeping peace in full, the evil Great Hanshin earthquake, which measured 7. 2 on the Richter scale, struck the Japanese metropolis of Kobe. Kobe has a population of 1. 5 million people and is a major port for importing and exporting goods for Japan, fit(p) south of the main island, Honshu, on a narrow strip of land between the ocean and high mountain ranges, it lies supra the junction of the Philippine and Eurasian plates.Kobe has rarely been affected by major earthquakes, only small tremors occasionally, precisely this earthquake that lasted for a whole 20 seconds, was the biggest to hit japan in 47 years. Japan is situated on the margin of the Eurasian plated, where the Philippine sea plate is being subducted below the Eurasian plate, resulting in Japan having greater than average seismic and volcanic activity. Immediately south of Osaka bay is a gaolbreak called the median tect onic line (MTL) and it was sudden battlefront along this fault that triggered the earthquake that hit Kobe.The movement was caused by the friction from the Eurasian and Philippine plates converging. The earthquake had a shallow focus, only 16 km below the surface, which had caused it to become so destructive. Kobe was largely affected, as the epicentre was only 30 km from the city centre. Japan is said to be the most earthquake prone country only when this was proved other in the Kobe earthquake. The 20 second earthquake caused the ground to move up to 50 cen prison termtres horizontally and up to 1 meter vertically.The primary effects from the seismic waves shaking the crust were severe causing the bump of buildings, bridges and courses. With a total of 75 000 buildings damaged or destroyed and all major road and rail way links damaged all communications from the east and west of japan were hop off. The after shocks from the earthquake caused the problems to become worse with a total of 5000 people dead, 300 000 homeless and 68 children orphaned. The earthquake also triggered a number of fires, congestion, chaos and business closures.Because of the severity of the earthquake it made it highly difficult for emergency services to reach the worst affected parts of the city. All gas, water and telecommunications were rise off making it extremely hard for emergency crews to communicate and for fire fighters to put out the fires crossways the city, leaving the fire fighters to watch helplessly as Kobe burned. The earthquake caused a total of 100 million dollars of damage with economic damage taking up 100 million dollars.Many typical Japanese damages policies did not cover earthquakes, causing many families to loose everything. In the first few days food, blankets, checkup supplies and clean water were of short supplies and the winter weather made it worse with temperatures dropping to -2. Because of the severity of the earthquake and the shortage in sup plies, authorities found the disaster difficult to cope with and the special defence forces were futile to reach the site until 4 hours after the earthquake with the original team only consisting of 170 troops.Even though the earthquake had such a large impact on all aspects of japan at the time it did not take them all to recover and get back on track with the short-term imprint and rescue measures put in place they were able to get water, electricity, gas and telephone services were in full working by July and by august the railways were back in service. The port was rebuilt and the import volumes recovered fully within a year and the exports were nearly back to normal. The earthquake also caused a major blood in Japanese Stock market which then caused a domino effect on the banks but despite this damage the local economy recovered quickly.