3.+Kobe+=+Impacts

Although the Kobe earthquake was not the biggest quake to have hit Japan in recent times, it was the most expensive with repairs costing more than US$200 billion. The fact that one of the world’s leading countries in creating contemporary technologies would just crumble under a mere earthquake that is not the biggest in scale and use billions of dollars to recover, may seem ironical to some people, but the money was used to better the fallen buildings and invest in the road and rail networks.

The quake caused the blooming engineers of that time to rethink their infrastructure to withstand the vigorous shakings of the ground. It also caused seismologist to improve technology to faster identify earthquake signals and enlightened the population, especially the help services to triumph over adversity.

 Loss of income  Stress placed on families and people  Isolation  Destruction of community structures and facilities ||  Loss and destruction of property  Insurance losses  Damage to industry and economy  Higher unemployment rate  Destruction of community structures and facilities ||  Changes to the landscape  Destruction of community structures and facilities  Destruction of infrastructure || Graph of Impacts
 * **Social** || **Economic** || **Environmental** ||
 *  Loss of life

The earthquake left 6,425 dead, injured 25,000, displaced 300,000 people, damaged or destroyed 100,000 buildings. More than 35,000 people were pulled from collapsed buildings by neighbors or rescue workers. Japanese refer to the disaster as the Great Hansin Earthquake. The spectacular collapse of the Hanshin elevated expressway featured on the front page of newspapers around the world. The Japanese construct major buildings to withstand quakes,so most city centre buildings survived. The fatalities were mainly in the suburbs, were broken gas mains set fire to old wooden houses. Many traditional houses are lightly built, but have heavy roofs to withstand typhoon winds. When the earthquake struck the heavy roofs made the flimsy houses collapse like pancakes. A major freeway collapsed, streets were uplifted, and railroad tracks buckled and twisted. Fire raged on and off for two days, and gas and water mains were ruptured. There were millions to be claimed in insurance losses and unemployment rate was high but the Japanese government took control of the hectic situation in order to rebuild the city.