Curfew In Kobe

Curfew In Kobe
2005.12.12 19:18

In January, 1995, the strong earthquake hit Kobe, left 5000 people dead. I had a chance to see the devastated area after the earthquake. At that time Kobe was definitely one of the most prosperous one million cities -the population was 1.3 million -in Japan, but after the quake, the city came down to as if the third grade city. What I noticed was that the patrol cars were circulating with a siren throughout the affected area incessantly. They needed to protect their abandoned area from looting. When natural disaster was the first cause of their mishaps, usually human disaster follows, still the city has been struggling from severe damages made those days.
This year our city had the earthquake similar to the size of the Kobe earthquake ten years ago, but we were extremely lucky since the epicentre of the quake happened to be located ten kilometres away off the shore, our city survived. Remember the natural disaster doesn't have nothing to do with human factors. Majority of buildings collapsed after the quake was built before 1981. At that time the standard of constructing buildings didn't fulfill the requirements regulated later of this year for possible quake occurrence.