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The Great Hanshin Earthquake, or Kobe earthquake as it is more known overseas, as an earthquake that happened Japan on Tuesday January 17, 1995 at 5:46 a.m. in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture. It measured 7.3 on the magnitude scale and 6.8 on the Moment magnitude scale. The trembles lasted for 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was found 16 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the city of Kobe.
About 6,434 people were killed, about 4,600 of them were in Kobe. With its population of 1.5 million it was the closest to the epicenter and hit by the strongest quakes. This was the worst earthquake in Japan since the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which ckilled over 140,000 people. It caused about ten trillion yen or $200 billion United States Dollars in damage, which was about 2.5% of Japan's GDP at the time. It is also in the Guinness Book of Records as the costliest natural disaster to befall any one country. The size of the earthquake caused a major down in Japanese stock markets, with the Nikkei 225 index plunging by a thousand points in one day following the quake.
Most of the deaths, over 4000, were in cities and the suburbs in Hyōgo Prefecture. Ruptured gas pipes ignited, and it was fueled by wooden construction material from houses, and broken water pipes slowed down firefighters efforts to put them out. Most of the traditional houses had very heavy tiled roofs which weighed around 2 tons, and was only intended to stop typhoons around Kobe, but they were only held up by a light wooden support frame. When the wood snapped and gave way, the roof crushed the walls and floors like a pancake. Newer homes have reinforced walls and lighter roofs to stop this from happening.
The damage was extremely more devastating than the Northridge earthquake. The difference in the damage was likely due to the kind of ground Kobe was on and the construction of its buildings. The dense...