Kobe is Japan's second most populated and industrialised area, after Tokyo. It is located on three plates; the Pacific, the Philippine and the Eurasian. This puts the whole of Japan in danger of having an earthquake.
The earthquake was occurring at 5.46 AM on January 17th 1995. The earthquake was recorded 7.2 on the Richter scale, making it a very fatal earthquake. The epicentre was in Kobe, the second largest city in Japan. The centre of Kobe city was affected the worst, because it was very economically developed.
By the end of the earthquake, including as a result of aftershocks and living outside due to the loss of homes, 5390 people dies. The majority of deaths were caused by fire storms. Some people were trapped under rubble for hours until they died of suffocation, but volunteers made an effort to decrease that, by searching with their bare hands for victims. Over 600 aftershocks followed, which made even more people die. As people's homes were destroyed, many people had to suffer and live in cold, difficult conditions. The fact that it was in January exacerbated the situation because it was freezing and disease spread, for example influenza.
Japan lies on three plate boundaries; the Eurasian plate, the Pacific plate and the Philippine plate. This creates a danger for them.
People were not aware the earthquake was going to happen. To predict an earthquake is very expensive. People were not prepared for the earthquake, however it is more worth it to pay for new buildings destroyed in earthquakes than to save for years just to find out when the next one will be.
In Kobe, there are some older and some newer areas to live in. Some houses were built before 1960 and could be made of concrete tiles. Houses like those were not earthquake proof so people who lived in them were in greater danger of their house, and lives suffering from any earthquake. The newer houses however, had a greater chance of not being completely destroyed because they would have ben more recently built, and made with stronger material. Since the year 1981, houses in Japan have been made earthquake proof. Older people were in more danger of death from this point of view because in an older suburb of Kobe, many elderly people lived there and owned older houses. They would have been in their homes at the time of the earthquake, and may have become trapped if their house collapsed.
In 1910 a series of fifty-two earthquakes struck Arizona between September 10th-23rd and it caused much of the Flagstaff residents to flee the area as even strong households cracked and chimneys crumbled. The fifty-two earthquakes were all light-shock earthquakes with magnitudes between 4.0-4.2 that came right after another. If only one earthquake occurred in that timespan then it is likely that only objects would be knocked from shelves but no damage would be done to infrastructure, but the earthquakes happened right after another causing significant slight
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake hit the Northern California coastline. The San Andreas fault shook 296 miles of the coast causing major damage throughout San Francisco, destroying about 80% of the city. Fires broke out throughout the city that lasted for several days. This was one of the worst Earthquakes recorded in history, killing 3,000 people.("The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake")
Japan is an island nation off the coast of East Asia. It is made up of four large islands and about 3,900 smaller ones. On a map, they form a thin crescent moon. All together, they form an area about the size of Montana. To the west, the sea of Japan separates it from its nearest neighbors, Korea and China. To the east lies the Pacific ocean. Japan has a moderate climate. Summers are nice. Winters are mild, with heavy snowfall limited to the north. Japan makes crops due to rain in the summer.
Earthquakes in California are certainly not a surprise. What is a surprise is their unpredictability and randomness. Geologists say there is roughly a 50 percent chance that a magnitude 8 or more quake will hit the Los Angeles area sometime over the next 30 years. And, over the past twenty years, the Los Angeles area has witnessed several earthquakes, and in particular, two that were quite devastating; the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, and the January 17, 1994, Northridge Earthquake. Given the certainty that earthquakes will occur, they still seem to come as a surprise, and leave many communities unprepared to deal with their aftermath.
On the night of April 18, 1906, the whole town was woken by erratic shaking. Although the earthquake lasted under a measly minute, it caused significant damage. Many fires started all throughout the city; San Francisco burned in turmoil.
The San Francisco Earthquake commenced at five thirteen o’clock in the morning, with the epicenter offshore of San Francisco. The city carried more than 400,000 people during this event (Earthquake of 1906, 1). Most of the
The epicenter of this earthquake is in San Francisco, hence the name of it. The cities that were affected by it included Santa Rosa, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. It awakened the city of San Francisco with a population of 400, 000 people with a magnitude of 7.8 (Frantz, 2016). Today, the current population of the city is twice as much compared to the population in 1906. Reconstruction of San Francisco
At 5:12 a.m. on April 18th, 1906, the California city of San Francisco was awoken by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. Chaos erupted with the earthquake leading to fire break outs throughout San Francisco (Cameron and Gordon. Pgs 69-73).The earthquake and the resulting fires caused destruction to majority of the city with buildings crumbling and igniting into flames. Many people died along with thousands and thousands of people being left homeless. This devastating earthquake left the city and United States in a financial crisis. Although the 1906 earthquake was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, the city of San Francisco was able to overcome these substantial physical, social and economic impacts it had.
October 17, 1989. Damage for this San Francisco Bay Area quake are close to 4 billion. The
The Great Kanto Earthquake also known as the Tokyo-Yokohama Earthquake of 1923 hit the metropolitan area of Kanto on September 1st, 1923 around 11:58 pm. It was a 7.9 on the Richter magnitude scale, killing over one-hundred and forty thousand people due to its high magnitude and the time it happened. The earthquake struck around lunch time, when many Japanese people were at home cooking at their charcoal or gas fueled stoves. At the moment the earthquake hit, it knocked down buildings that caught flames from the stoves that fell over, enflaming the city. The fire was swept up and able to spread due to the gusts of wind that occurred for two days afterwards, resulting in firestorms. Charles Blauvelt experienced the ordeal of the fire describing the flames as “[covering] the whole city [as they] burned all day and night.” In addition to the firestorms and the earthquake itself, there was a shock because of all the fallen debris which triggered tsunamis to fill and flood Japanese cities. These tsunamis, that were about thirty feet tall, destroyed central Tokyo and immensely added to the death toll.
It was known as the great Alaska earthquake. On March 27, 1964, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2 struck the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. This earthquake is the second largest earthquake ever recorded in the world, the first as a magnitude 9.2 in Chile in 1960. In other words, this earthquake released 10 million times more energy than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Japan. Equally important, this (Abby Lautt) earthquake produced landslides and caused catastrophic damage covering an area of 130,000 square kilometers, which is the entire state of Alaska, parts of Canada and Washington. The earthquake lasted approximately four minutes with eleven substantial after shock occurring over the next 24hrs causing damages in the amount of almost $400,000 and killed 131 people.
In March of 2011, Japan suffered one of the largest most powerful earthquakes to hit Honshu, Japan. (“Facts about Japan”) The earthquake registered 8.9 and was the fifth largest most powerful earthquake in the world.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Perhaps more than any other nation in the world, Japan is shaped by its geography to a tremendous extent. Technically classified as an archipelago, Japan is a curved chain of four islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, plus over a thousand smaller islands). However, it is first and foremost an island nation, a fact which isolated Japan from the rest of the world. The second largest influence in Japanese geography is the size of the nation. The total area of Japan proper is a little under 143 thousand square miles; the contiguous United States spreads across just over 3 million. To say that
An earthquake occurs abruptly and causes severs damage to people, property, landscape and more. A great mega-thrust earthquake, known as the Great Tohoku Earthquake has shaken Japan at 5:46:24 UTC on March 11, 2011. It caused a severe disaster, including tsunami and nuclear radiation exposure.. This mega-quake located at the latitude 38.297 degree North and longitude of 142.372 degree East, near the east coast of Honshu, Japan (USGS, 2013). An earthquake and tsunami waves caused widespread damage to many areas of Japan. People in Japan are still recovering from the damages.
The death toll climbs to over 10,000 and is still rising (Branigan 2). The disaster in Japan began without warning on Friday March 11, 2011 at 2:46pm with a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in the country (Fackler 3). A massive thirty-three foot high tsunami, generated by the earthquake, swept over lands in northern Japan, taking objects and debris with it. To make matters worse, the tsunami caused the cooling systems at several nuclear power plants to fail. The disaster in Japan was a tragic event, and it had a plethora of causes and effects.