Why Did So Many People Die in the Kobe Earthquake?

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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.

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