Quake Rocks Western Japan Hundreds Killed, Hundreds More Trapped In Collapsed Buildings In Major Urban Area
Japan’s deadliest earthquake in 40 years slammed its western cities before dawn today, killing more than 600 people and injuring thousands. Hundreds more were missing. The quake triggered raging fires, destroyed roads, and toppled buildings.
The earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.2, devastated Kobe, a port city of 1.4 million people 280 miles west of Tokyo. It was barely felt in Tokyo.
National police reported 686 dead and 2,439 injured, and said 534 people were missing. The toll was expected to rise.
The quake knocked trains off their tracks, collapsed elevated highways, knocked down buildings and set off hundreds of fires. Thousands of buildings were damaged.
Kobe was a landscape of wreckage grand and small. Television showed a teenage boy standing atop a mound of debris from his destroyed home, crying “Grandma, Grandma!” His father wandered nearby, dazed.
“I thought it was the end of the world,” Minaru Takasu, 64, told the Asahi newspaper. “I’m happy to be alive.”
Huge pillars of smoke rose into the sky over Kobe and could be seen from Osaka, 15 miles east across the bay.
People huddled in the streets of Kobe wrapped in bedding, some bleeding from cuts and scrapes. Others wandered the streets, staring at the collapsed buildings.
It was the deadliest quake in Japan since 1952, when an 8.2 quake killed more than 8,000 on the northern island of Hokkaido.
The shaking lasted about 20 seconds. The jolt was strong enough to twist doorframes, making it difficult to escape from buildings.
More than four hours after the quake, fires burned out of control in Kobe, darkening the skies over the city with a thick cloud of smoke. One fire appeared to cover at least six city blocks in a residential area.
The quake was also felt strongly in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, but the most widespread damage was in and around Kobe.
The western city of Ashiya, a posh residential area between Kobe and Osaka, was reportedly devastated. Japan’s national television, NHK, said up to 200 people were believed buried in rubble there.
Deaths also were reported on Awaji Island, closest to the epicenter.
The quake struck at 5:46 a.m. (12:46 p.m. PST Monday) on the first anniversary of Los a 6.7 Angeles earthquake, the Central Meteorological Agency said. Part of the quake’s destructive power was due to the shallowness of its epicenter, 12 miles under Awaji in the Inland Sea.
Many people were trapped in their homes as the quake tore down buildings just before dawn. But roads and trains were less full than they would have been at a later hour.
“If the earthquake had occurred a couple of hours later, it would have been a massive, chaotic disaster,” said Yoshiaki Kawata of Kyoto University’s Disaster Research Institute.
“The whole house must have picked up and moved about five feet,” he said.”All of us were outside, some with clothes, some without clothes, some with blankets,” he said. “There were no sirens at all. No emergency sirens, nothing. It was very eerie.”Japan is one of the world’s most
seismically active areas, but this quake’s destructiveness shocked even Japanese rescue officials.
“I’ve never felt such a large earthquake before,” said Takeshi Sakamoto, head of rescue operations on Awaji Island.
Sections of several elevated highways collapsed, including the Hanshin Highway, the major link between Osaka and Kobe. Telephone service was disrupted, leaving many residents unable to report fires and summon help.
More than a dozen aftershocks rattled the area in the hours following the quake. More aftershocks were expected, adding to fire danger from broken gas mains.
Prime Minister Tomiichi Muraya ma’s Cabinet held an emergency meeting to discuss disaster measures and troops were dispatched to the quake zone.
Stock trading was suspended on the exchange in Osaka.
Graphic: Map of area