Photos

This statue as you can see is standing with the clock, but the time was slightly out because I took this shot around 12pm and not the time said on the clock, the reason is because whe the earthquake hit Kobe this statue was knocked down and the wires were ripped out of the socked and this is the statue that reminds people of what happened.

The same cause as the San Francisco earthquake?

Seismologists have a growing conviction that a phenomena wherein the amplitude of the wave is magnified at the border between soft and hard ground increased the damage. Kobe, which suffered much of the damage, is built on a complex formation of various hardnesses of ground, ranging from the solid Rokko Mountain to the soft reclaimed land of Port Island. This phenomena, which resembles wave activity at the waterside, was also observed in the 1985 Mexico earthquake and the 1989 San Francisco earthquake

The ground shifted by 7 inches
The ground moved 7 inches in horizontal shaking in this earthquake, and 4 inches in the vertical direction, the greatest ever recorded in Japan.


Earthquake activity still active
The earthquake is still active, with 716 aftershocks recorded by 10 AM of Jan. 18. 74 of these could be felt by the human body, and 14 of these occurred on the 18th.

Railway lines and expressways
While the railway lines are gradually recovering, the line between Kyoto and Himeji remains closed. Damage from the fallen bridge girders and collapsed railway bases are beyond expectation and re-building is expected to take more than few months.

Expressways are crippled with elevated portions smashed onto the ground and cave-ins in many places. When the damage will be restored is unknown. It is difficult to leave Kansai on land even as of 12:00 1/18.

Electricity, gas, phones
The quake has halted 15 generators in thermal power plants in Osaka. Electric power supply was cut to over approximately 0.9 million householders at one point, this recovered down to around 0.4 million householders in Kobe and Nishimiya-Cities by the morning of 1/18. But the damage inflicted upon poles is yet to be investigated. When electricity will be fully recovered is unknown.

Gas supplies are halted to over around 0.83 million householders in Kobe, Ashiya, and Takarazuka-Cities due to more than 2,600 cases of gas leaks in Hyogo and Osaka Prefectures.
6,000 staff of Osaka Gas were called to conduct safety inspection. It will take about one and a half months to restore.

Around 250,000 telephone lines were paralyzed at one point, which has recovered extensively except for 60,000 lines in part of Kobe City. Communication networks are fragmented here and there, because the telegraph poles and cables were destroyed by the quake and fire. Full scale recovery will take more than a month. In emergency, NTT has provided four wireless satellite phones and 34 public phones in Kobe-City.