Six years ago next month, a killer earthquake struck the port city of Kobe, burying thousands of people, homes and the myth that Japanese planning skills could cope with a disaster of such magnitude.
Since then, successive governments have tried to erase the debacle with a $180 billion budget to upgrade rescue and relief operations in a country that registers thousands of tremors annually.
In a way, the Kobe quake that struck at 5:46 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1995, has served as a wake-up call for Japan and other quake-prone regions in the world by exposing a nation that lived for centuries above a geological time bomb but failed to make adequate preparations.
The time bomb is still ticking.
The government’s Earthquake Research Committee recently predicted there was an 80 percent chance a major offshore quake would hit the Tokyo area within 20 years.
A report by the committee concluded the temblor would measure a magnitude 7.5 to 8, compared to 7.3 in the Kobe quake, and would kill at least 1,300 people. It would be followed by a huge tsunami.
Kobe’s earthquake offered a lesson for Japan, a country where no one moves without an order: In an emergency, when minutes count, the shorter the chain of command the better the results.
In 1995, as Kobe burned, Japanese citizens saw the extent of official bungling, the lack of foresight, the sight of bent bridges and humped highways that experts had boasted would never buckle.
Critics found there had been no plans to supply water or food to devastated areas. Communications were blacked out in a nation proud of its telephone system.
For hours after the quake converted large parts of Kobe into rubble and cinders, Tokyo’s main emergency coordination agency was still unaware of what had happened.
The agency jumped into action only after its first employee walked into his office at 9:26 a.m., nearly fours hour after the quake hit.
“Fortunately he was 34 minutes early for work,” said Ryo Sasaki, current director for Disaster Prevention at Japan’s National Land Agency, the department responsible for coordinating public safety.
“We had no damage report. No one had mobilized the rescue operations and there was delay in the request for nationwide aid. No one could react without higher permission.
“Even the National Defense Force [the military] was not allowed to move without an official request by the local or central authorities,” he recalled.
Today Sasaki’s agency is staffed around the clock. Even he works the overnight shift once a week. About 100 public officials on the emergency committee now carry pagers and are supposed to be able to meet within 30 minutes of a disaster.
The Japan Meteorological Agency, the country’s quake-monitoring entity, now compiles daily data from 3,800 seismic stations, seismographs and strain meters placed near active fault lines up and down the archipelago. The data allow experts to quickly pinpoint a quake’s epicenter and determine the magnitude and likely damage.
Quake monitors can alert the media and local security, fire brigade and police chiefs within two minutes of identifying and locating a quake area. The heads of local task forces can make decisions, although some may decide to consult higher ranks first.
More than six hours after the Kobe quake hit, the prime minister’s office, the main command post for all emergencies, was still unaware of the magnitude of the disaster. Estimates wrongly placed the death toll at well below 500. In reality, by that time most of the 6,432 casualties had died. Those who were trapped and wounded waited in vain for help. Underestimation of the toll initially led officials to treat the situation as a lesser-grade emergency.
Such blunders were kept quiet for a long time in a country where a patriarchal officialdom tries to protect the public from the bitter truth.
Sasaki blames the slow initial reaction on lack of communications and lack of information. Private telephone lines were not cut by the quake but were blocked by overloaded exchanges as millions simultaneously tried to call for help or let loved ones know they had survived. And instead of trying to help those trapped, other survivors lined up at public pay phones whose exchanges still functioned to make calls.
In their barracks, members of the Japanese military waited for orders to mobilize all day–and some part of the next day. The National Defense Force is the main rescue task force in cases of national disaster.
Firefighters helped rescue trapped residents instead of fighting the fires that eventually killed most of the victims. Roads were blocked by debris, hospitals were inaccessible and rescuers focused on what Sasaki calls a “first come, first served basis.”
Under the new plan, advance teams will plant red, blue, green and yellow priority flags in devastated sites to guide rescue squads to the most needy areas.
And recent improvements in collecting data on tremors will be useful when the next big quake strikes Japan.
Takashi Kato, administrative chief of the Japan Meteorological Agency, agrees seismic activity in recent months is above normal. He said his agency last year registered 80,000 tremors on the Japanese mainland and 20,000 on offshore islands. Of those, only 1,000 were classified as earthquakes; the rest were hardly felt by the public.
Since the Kobe quake, the meteorological agency has doubled to 600 the number of seismic stations around the archipelago. Local prefectures, conscious of the inevitable, have added 3,200 seismic installations of their own. All feed their data into the Japan Meteorological Agency’s computers, which are monitored 24 hours a day. Beepers connected to the computers alert hundreds of staffers to any quake above a level 3, out of a maximum 10.
“We are now capable of giving the alarm within two minutes of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption,” explained Kato as his pager beeped. A message on its screen informed him of a minor tremor in southwestern Japan.
Today a satellite telephone network is activated for rescue and relief operations. A second emergency operation room was built at Tachikawa, 30 miles west of central Tokyo.
New building codes place more emphasis on earthquake safety than beauty. The government has tightened building regulations.
“Long before Kobe, earthquake-resistance specialists like myself talked about the importance of quake-resistant constructions,” said Isao Sakamoto, professor of architecture at Tokyo University. “But the majority of builders, architects and sales people were more concerned how houses and buildings looked.
“But since Kobe they have become aware of earthquake safety in their constructions. Now they even advertise their quake-resistant methods,” he added.
One of the lessons of Kobe for architects was the conclusion that many new “quake-proof” buildings collapsed because their concrete pillars were too weak, a flaw rectified by new regulations.
Japan is preparing for the worst after this month’s prediction that the next killer quake is likely to strike the Tokyo area, considered the world’s most densely populated region.
Since 1600, 19 major earthquakes have struck in and around Tokyo.
In the 1923 quake, 99,331 died and another 43,476 were missing while 480,000 homes were razed or burned. Xenophobic nationalists blamed Korean immigrants for lighting the fires that quakes always kindle. A gullible public massacred hundreds of Koreans.
After the 1995 Kobe quake, authorities published and distributed to every household pamphlets on how to behave in case of a major quake: “Don’t listen to rumors. Listen only to official advice on the radio and the TV,” says one directive. “Stay indoors. Don’t run out into the streets,” says another.
Urban “disaster warehouses” throughout Japan are now stocked with canned rations and water paid for by regional budgets. Most foreign embassies also keep emergency rations, water reserves and diesel generators in their basements.
These supplies are replaced with fresh rations on Sept. 1 every year when the entire country, at the urban level, simulates an earthquake emergency.
On that day mock victims are carried to hospitals, troops are mobilized, and fire brigades and emergency rescue teams simulate a tragedy.
Sitting on top of 2,000 seismic fault lines that could burst into action any moment can be unnerving. Since 1965 Japan has shelled out $1 billion to support early warning research by scientists still trying to find the magic formula for predicting an earthquake.
Despite claims to the contrary and some success in forecasting volcanic eruptions, earthquakes are unpredictable.
“Suppose we could develop a medicine that would allow humans to live forever without aging. This is in the realm of science fiction. At the moment earthquake prediction is a similar thing,” said Robert Geller, an American seismologist and scholar who teaches at Tokyo University.
But the quest for the magic recipe persists.
“The benefits are so great we continue to invest money in this research,” said Kato.
Efforts to counter nature’s fury remain a priority in Japan, a country whose precarious position on top of a moving earth has spawned many a local doomsday prophet to predict the end of the world is near.
