Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 20, 1995 TAG: 9501200103
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: TOKYO LENGTH: Medium
``I myself consider it very serious that it took so long for us to comprehend the extent of the damage'' from Tuesday's quake, said Nobuo Ishihara, deputy chief Cabinet secretary in charge of coordinating the national government's bureaucracy.
Ishihara's comment marked the first admission by an official of the government of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama that rescue efforts have been mismanaged.
He made it shortly before police raised the death toll to 4,048, putting the Kobe-area earthquake at the top of the list of post-1945 disasters. It is the deadliest earthquake since 1923, when 100,000 people perished in Tokyo in an 8.3-magnitude temblor.
As rescue efforts continued Friday, 21,671 were reported injured and 727 missing and presumed buried in rubble. More than 1,500 bodies pulled from the rubble remained unidentified, police said. The ranks of refugees had swelled to 270,000 by Thursday night, and people pleaded for water, food and even toilet paper.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said a second American, identified only as a female English teacher, died in the earthquake. Two days ago, Voni Lynn Wong, 24, of Los Angeles was the first American victim identified. She, too, was an English teacher.
More than 30,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged, and broad areas remained without water, gas or electricity early today. Jesper Koll, an economist with J.P. Morgan Securities Asia, estimated losses at between $45 billion and $60 billion.
Disclosure of the record death toll spurred new criticism of the government among TV commentators after Murayama himself surveyed the scene from a military helicopter and then walked through a section of Kobe. He described the ruins as ``beyond imagination - far exceeding anyone's expectations.''
In Tokyo, Ishihara, Japan's highest-ranking bureaucrat, declared that ``the Self Defense Forces should have been dispatched more quickly. But they could not be sent without a request from the prefecture [state] government, and the prefecture was in chaos.''
Five hours passed before troops were requested, and only 2,300 soldiers were sent to the earthquake area the first day. The Asahi newspaper reported that 13,500 troops and 30,000 police officers from other areas of Japan had been dispatched to the disaster area by today. Yet rescue efforts had not begun this morning in some residential sections of hard-hit Nishinomiya, Ashiya and Kobe, the paper said.
In Kobe, many evacuees complained to NHK Television interviewers that they are getting only two meals a day. Often, a meal consists of only a single rice ball, some said.
City officials said deliveries of water were being made to only half the relief centers. Since the earthquake struck, overnight temperatures have hovered around 32 degrees.
Adding to the difficulties in Kobe, four moderate aftershocks struck the region Thursday. And once again Thursday, four major new fires broke out even after three days of blazes had finally ended. Firefighters' inability to obtain water from broken mains was so severe that even one fire station burned down.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB