11th December 2008
Kobe Quake, Japan 1995One of the world's most chaotic earthquakes happened in Kobe, Japan on Tuesday January 17, 1995 in the early morning.
It was caused by tectonic plates moving around on the earth's crust. To be exact, the Philippines Sea Plate and the Pacific sea plate were subducting (plate subduction) under each other, causing many miniscule and irrelevant tremors, and in this particular case, an earthquake. These plates are still doing this today, and will continue to do this until the end of time itself. So they will therefore continue to cause small, unnoticable quakes, and sometimes large earthquakes, forevermore.
The 1995 earthquake measured a mind-boggling 8.5 on the Richter scale, which is really VERY big. It is enormous compared to some other quakes and tremors that have previously happened, like the daily earth tremors happening near fault lines and plate boundaries all over the world. It was the worst earthquake to shake up Japan since the 1923 Kanto quake, and the Kanto quake measured around 8.4 on the Richter Scale. What is more, the many large aftershocks (of which around 408 were felt) that shook Kobe for around 9 months afterwards did not help the reconstruction of many buildings in Kobe.
The earthquake itself did not last very long at all. In fact, it only lasted a couple of seconds! To be exact, 20 seconds. But 20 seconds is still enough for an earthquake to cause MAJOR damage. And that is exactly what this earthquake did.
The epicentre of the quake was around 20 miles from Kobe, 15 miles below the island Awajisima, but the earthquake crossed those few miles extremely quickly, and it did not lose that much of it's strength at all. It was slightly weaker after all that travelling, but that simply did not make too much of a difference- it still managed to wipe out thousands of people!
Dennis Kessler, a british journalist who expierienced the eathrquake said:
"The whole room was moving around like jelly!"From what he says, you discern that the ground had liquified by then, which proves how intense this quake really was.
Click here for a quick video about the earthquake.
---> http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAmTJC8LZ0
(if the above link does not work copy and paste it into an internet browser.)
The damage caused by this earthquake was amazingly vast. It took out 6434 people with it when it died down! Not to mention all the animals and such. It also managed to tear down a countless amount of buildings, so much that is cost Japan around TWO BILLION US dollars to fix it (which caused the Japan stock market to plunge downwards)! Because of that, it holds the world record for 'the most costliest natural disaster' in the Guinness Book of World Records.
It is quite common nowadays to see people praying or having a memorial service for those who lost their lives in this earthquake, and many quakes before and since. Earthquakes are a terrible thing to have to go through.
The 1995 Kobe Quake was indeed a very deadly disaster.
Disclaimer- all images here were edited by me, Caitlin Fischer.
I do not claim credit for the original/separate photos.
