Kobe

Question 1

Short term impacts

Answer 1

• 5,500 dead and 40,000 injured
• 1153 evacuation centres set up
• financial damage = 2.5% of gdp
• 200,000 buildings damaged
• 12% of industry destroyed
• 90% of the port destroyed
• fires across nagata ward
• 82% of school damaged

Question 2

Long term impacts

Answer 2

• 230,000 homeless with -2 degrees at night
• fires destroyed 7500 homes
• 70% of city’s water out of operation
• 80% of buildings in cbd unusable
• 20,000 unemployed

Question 3

Responses

Answer 3

• 1.4 million volunteers
• water supply fully restored within 3 months
• by July, most of the infrastructure was operational
• 80% of the port was fixed within a year
• by January 1999, 134,000 housing units were built

Question 4

Management

Answer 4

• new buildings built on solid rock to prevent liquefaction
• new seismometers
• earthquake kits for each household
• school children put through earthquake drills 4x a year
• 1st September is national earthquake day
• new structural regulations

Question 5

Problems that increased the disaster

Answer 5

Liquefaction:

• port built on reclaimed land
• destroyed 80% of piers
• high water content magnified shockwaves

Old traditional buildings:

• 50% of people who died were 60+
• wooden houses weren’t designed for horizontal movement
• heavy tiled roofs collapsed
• most of the buildings didn’t comply with the building standard code ‘building standard law’

Question 6

Kobe earthquake

Answer 6

• SE Japan on Honshu
• Philippine plate sub ducted under Eurasian plate by 10cm a year
• 17th January 1995
• 5:46am
• magnitude 7.2
• lasted for 20 seconds
• ground moved 18cm horizontally and 12cm vertically
• focus = 16km