Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 18, 1995 TAG: 9501180072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KOBE, JAPAN LENGTH: Medium
In large areas of this once-prosperous city, fire destroyed what Tuesday's 7.2-magnitude earthquake did not. But by today many of the fires ran out of fuel and burned themselves out.
Elevated roads and bridges that Japanese engineers boasted were quake-proof were broken at crazy angles, flung to earth by the force of nature, crushing whatever was beneath them.
Motorists perished as their cars skidded off the collapsing highways. Tracks and bridges for Japan's famous ``bullet'' trains were damaged badly enough to be out of action for months. Hundreds of thousands of survivors struggled without electricity, gas or water.
Hardly a block in this industrial port city of 1.4 million people had a house or building intact. Many streets were reduced to piles of rubble by the strongest quake to strike an urban area of Japan since 1948.
Only a few fires still burned today. One building near the railroad station was burning violently, but few firefighters were in sight. The surrounding area was nearly destroyed, and there was no place for the fire to spread.
Osaka, Japan's second-largest city and across the bay from Kobe, also was heavily damaged. The wreckage extended 50 miles northwest of Kobe to the ancient capital, Kyoto, where treasured Buddha statues and a five-story pagoda built in 951 suffered minor damage.
More than 600 aftershocks hit, including 60 that could be felt.
National police said 2,014 people were known dead, 1,058 were missing and 11,977 injured. One American was among those killed, the U.S. Embassy said. Details were withheld pending notification of next of kin.
The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, said an American woman named Voni Wong, a resident of Ashiya City, had been killed. It was not immediately clear whether the newspaper was referring to the U.S. citizen whose death was announced by the embassy.
Just outside Kobe, damage seemed almost arbitrary - a showroom window at an auto dealership survived undamaged. Next to it, four wooden houses collapsed. In the city, a five-story building had fallen on its side, and a seven-story bank building leaned over the sidewalk.
``I thought it was the end of the world,'' said 64-year-old Minoru Takasu, whose house fell down around him in Nishinomiya city, six miles from Kobe.
``I survived by sliding into a small gap between a dish cabinet and the wall,'' he told the Asahi newspaper. ``I'm happy to be alive!''
The shaking lasted about 20 seconds, and when it was over, 8,380 buildings were destroyed. Many people slept outside for fear aftershocks would cause further damage to buildings left standing.
About 100,000 people spent the night in emergency shelters, eating rice balls handed out by rescue workers and sipping water trucked in by the fire department because so many water lines were fractured.
Many fled their homes with nothing more than scanty nightclothes.
``I brought no food with me,'' said a man interviewed by Japanese television as he huddled near a fire in a garbage bin in a parking lot. ``But someone gave me food. We're all sharing everything.''
Takarazuka, Ashiya and Awaji Island also were damaged in the quake, which occurred a year after a magnitude 6.7 quake killed 61 people in and around the Northridge area north of Los Angeles.
``The quake came suddenly. I could not stop trembling with fear under my futon,'' Tomiko Watase, a coffee shop owner in the town of Awaji, told Kyodo New Service.
The military sent 2,000 soldiers to the quake zone to help rescue efforts. In Kobe, helicopters buzzed overhead as the government ferried in food and blankets.
Keywords:
INFOLINE FATALITY
by CNB