Great Hanshin earthquake
The Great Hanshin earthquake (阪神・淡路大震災; Hanshin-Awaji-daishinsai), or Kobe earthquake as it is more commonly known overseas, was an earthquake in Japan that measured 7.2 on the Richter scale. It occurred on January 17, 1995 at 5:46:52am in the southern part of Hyogo Prefecture and lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The epicenter of the earthquake was on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the cosmopolitan city of Kobe with a population of 1.5 million.
A total of 6,433 people, mainly in Kobe, lost their lives. Additionally, it caused approximately ten trillion yen in damage, 2.5% of Japan's GDP at the time. It was the worst earthquake in Japan since the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, which claimed 140,000 lives, and it is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the "costliest natural disaster to befall any one country," but it is expected that this earthquake will cede that title to Hurricane Katrina for the 2007 Guinness Book of Records.
The earthquake
| Fatality rates | |
| Nada-ku | 0.703% |
| Higashinada-ku | 0.692% |
| Nagata-ku | 0.596% |
| Ashiya | 0.468% |
| Hyogo-ku | 0.365% |
| Nishinomiya | 0.239% |
| source | |
The earthquake struck early in the morning without anytype of warning. The extent of the damage was considerably greater than in the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994, which, by coincidence, had occurred a year before on the same date. This was mainly because of Kobe's higher population density and linear layout, which made infrastructure networks much less redundant, and because of the closer proximity of the epicenter to urbanized areas, which increased the amount of damage to buildings.
Human casualties
6,433 people died and 43,792 were injured in the earthquake. Many elderly were among the casualties, especially elderly women. Although less than 18 percent of the area's population was over 60, the majority of those killed were over 60, and the majority were female. 77% of those killed were crushed to death; the remainder were killed mainly by burns or penetrating injuries from debris.
Building damage
Buildings in every part of the city were toppled or left leaning on their foundations, although some of the damage can be attributed to shortcuts in building technique. Many traditional wooden houses with tile roofs collapsed entirely. As few as 20% of the buildings in downtown Kobe were usable following the earthquake. Over three hundred fires broke out, at least twelve of them major, and fire crews were dispatched from as far away as Tokyo to fight the blazes. 7,483 buildings burned down and 9,017 were otherwise damaged by fire. In total, 104,906 houses were completely destroyed, and as many as 460,000 were damaged. Over 300,000 people were left homeless in the aftermath.
The worst damage was in Nagata Ward, but building damage was widespread across the western Kansai region. Among the many buildings severely damaged was the theater housing the Takarazuka Revue, which was forced to cancel performances for two months. Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya was also damaged, but less severely.
Transportation infrastructure damage
Ten spans of the Hanshin Expressway Route 3 in three locations in Kobe and Nishinomiya were knocked over, blocking a link that carried forty percent of Osaka-Kobe road traffic. Half of the elevated expressway's piers were damaged in some way, and the entire route was not reopened until September 30, 1996. Three bridges on the less-trafficked Route 5 were damaged, but the highway was reopened well ahead of Route 3 and served as one of the main intercity road links for a time. The Meishin Expressway was only lightly damaged, but was closed during the day for several weeks so that emergency vehicles could easily access the hardest-hit areas to the west. Many surface highways were clogged for some time due to the collapse of higher-capacity elevated highways.
Most railways in the region were also damaged. In the aftermath of the earthquake, only 30% of the Osaka-Kobe railway tracks were operational. Daikai Station on the Kobe Kosoku Railway line collapsed, bringing down part of National Route 30 above it. Wooden supports collapsed inside supposedly solid concrete pilings under the tracks of the Shinkansen high-speed rail line, causing the entire line to shut down. However, the railways rebounded quickly after the quake, reaching 80% operability in one month.
Artificial islands in the Port of Kobe suffered some subsidence as their soil collapsed into Osaka Bay. However, the newly-completed artificial island supporting Kansai International Airport was not significantly affected. The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, under construction near the earthquake's epicenter, was not damaged but was reportedly lengthened by a full meter due to plate tectonics.
The damage to highways and subways was the most graphic image of the earthquake at the time, as most people in Japan believed those structures to be relatively safe from earthquake damage by design. Images of the fallen Hanshin Expressway overpasses made front pages of newspapers worldwide.
Other infrastructure damage
Power, telephone, water, and natural gas lines were all damaged in the earthquake. While electric and telephone lines were repaired quickly and fully operational within a month, water and gas mains took more time to repair and were operating at less than half capacity a month after the earthquake. However, water and gas lines were almost entirely repaired within a few months.
Response
In the aftermath, both citizens and specialists lost faith in the technology of their early warning systems and earthquake construction techniques. The national government of Japan was criticized for not acting quickly enough to save many people, for poorly managing Japanese volunteers, and for initially refusing help from foreign nations, including the U.S., Korea, and the United Kingdom. The language barriers and the obvious lack of Japanese medical licensing by foreign volunteers were cited as justification, but some critics suggested that racism and national pride were stronger factors.
Government response
National government agencies contributed 340,000 person-days to search and rescue, but only after considerable delays. [1] At the time, Japan had no national disaster agency and no response plan for a non-military disaster of the earthquake's scope. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama waited for almost a day before dispatching military troops to aid in the search for survivors, because of the poorly-defined status of Japan's armed forces under its pacifist Constitution. Government regulations kept European rescue dogs quarantined at immigration facilities and kept a large amount of relief funding from being disbursed until months after the disaster. [2]
The government set up a number of shelters in gymnasiums, schools, and other available facilities. The shelters quickly overflowed beyond capacity. Because of fire concerns, the shelters were not heated, so evacuees were forced to bundle up for warmth in freezing winter temperatures. Shortly after the earthquake, the poor conditions in the shelters prompted local authorities and citizens' groups to open new facilities, although the temporary facilities were still too few to meet demand. Eventually, temporary housing was built for elderly evacuees with nowhere else to go, but the elimination of social networks made the transition difficult for many. A few evacuees committed suicide in the months following the earthquake, while a larger number were found dead and unnoticed in their new homes. [3]
It must be noted that all the members of the Japanese Diet are said to have given their months' salaries to aid the relief efforts.
Local government response
Local hospitals (governed by individual wards and cities) struggled to keep up with demand for medical treatment, largely due to collapsed "lifelines" that kept supplies and personnel from reaching the affected areas. Several foreign countries offered to send additional medical personnel, but the national government declined those offers due to concerns over housing, licensing and language barriers. [4]
Private response
In contrast to the failure of government relief efforts, volunteer efforts to help earthquake victims were so widespread that 1995 has been called "Japan's year of the volunteer." Approximately 1.2 million volunteers were involved in relief efforts during the first three months following the earthquake. Retailers such as Daiei and Seven-Eleven used their existing supply networks to provide necessities in affected areas, while NTT and Motorola provided free telephone service for victims. Even the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza syndicate was involved in distributing food and supplies to needy victims. [5]
By cabinet order, January 17th is now Fire Protection and Volunteer Day across Japan.
Reconstruction
The reconstruction of Kobe following the earthquake was rapid:
- March 20: Container handling resumed at the Port of Kobe.
- Early April: JR lines reopened.
- August 23: All railway lines in the region fully operational.
- October: Hanshin Expressway Route 5 reopened.
- July 31: Port Liner reopened.
- August 23: Rokko Liner reopened.
- August 24: Kobe Harbor Highway reopened.
- September 30: Hanshin Expressway Route 3 fully reopened.
(sources: [6] [7])
The Port of Kobe was declared fully restored in early 1997. [8]
Eastern wards of Kobe City grew in population after the disaster, while western wards never fully recovered. [9]
Other effects
Economic aftershocks
This earthquake caused over US$100 billion in damage. Most of the losses were uninsured, as only 3% of property in the Kobe area was covered by earthquake insurance, compared to 16% in Tokyo.
The sheer size of the earthquake caused a major decline in Japanese stock markets, with the Nikkei 225 index plunging by a thousand points in one day following the quake. This financial damage was the chief cause for the collapse of Barings Bank due to the actions of Nick Leeson, who had speculated vast amounts of money on Japanese and Singaporean derivatives.
Effect on disaster prevention planning
The earthquake proved to be a major wake-up call for Japanese disaster prevention authorities. The national government changed its disaster response policies in the wake of the earthquake, and its response to the Chuetsu Earthquake of 2004 was significantly faster and more effective. The Ground Self-Defense Forces were given automatic authority to respond to earthquakes over a certain magnitude, which allowed them to deploy to the Niigata region within minutes. Control over fire response was likewise handed over from local fire departments to a central command base in Tokyo and Kyoto. [10]
In response to the widespread damage to transportation infrastructure, and the resulting effect on emergency response times in the disaster area, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport began designating special disaster prevention routes and reinforcing the roads and surrounding buildings so as to keep them as intact as possible in the event of another earthquake. [11] Hyogo's prefectural government invested millions of yen in the years following the quake to build earthquake-proof shelters and supplies in public parks. [12]
Elsewhere in Japan, the Tokyo metropolitan government set up an emergency food and water supply network based around gas stations, which were mostly unaffected in the Hanshin earthquake. However, citizens' groups have taken up the bulk of disaster planning, partly out of distrust for the government still held after the disaster in Kobe. [13] [14]
Memorials
The Kobe Luminarie, a small city of Christmas lights, is set up near Shin-Kobe Station every December in commemoration of the earthquake. Large "1.17" digits are illuminated at Kobe City Hall on January 17 of each year.
Name
The name "Great Hanshin Earthquake," which is most common in referring to the disaster today, is credited to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. In early reports, the disaster was often referred to as the "Great Kansai Earthquake" (関西大地震 Kansai-ōjishin). Its official name designated by the Japan Meteorological Agency is "The South Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake of 1995" (平成7年兵庫県南部地震 Heisei-shichinen-Hyōgoken-nambu-jishin). Official Japanese publications generally use the phrase "Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster" (阪神・淡路大震災; Hanshin-Awaji-daishinsai), which was selected by the cabinet around February.