Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501240052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KOBE, JAPAN LENGTH: Medium
The death toll from Tuesday's 6.8-magnitude quake, Japan's deadliest in more than 70 years, soared past 4,900, and hopes were fading for the 202 people still listed as missing.
The search for survivors took on added urgency with forecasts of heavy rain for today, raising fears of landslides that could topple buildings severely weakened by the quake.
``Finding the last citizens who are trapped, that's our top priority right now,'' city spokesman Tomoaki Watanabe said. ``We're using the dogs all over trying to check every house. We're still finding people.''
Three people - two 79-year-old men and a 63-year-old woman - were rescued Saturday at two locations in the city, police said. There were no details about their conditions.
After widespread complaints of ineptitude, the government's relief operation was in high gear Saturday, with hundreds of workmen clearing debris, repairing power lines and pouring fresh asphalt on damaged streets.
Small shops, a few banks and about 100 primary and secondary schools reopened Saturday for the first time since the quake. Electric power was restored to most parts of the city and even the traffic lights were functioning.
More than 800,000 households, however, were still without water and heat.
Nearly three inches of rain was forecast for today, and the government's Central Meteorological Agency warned that the quake had weakened ground on the hills, so landslides ``may occur even with light rain.''
Seiichi Sakurai, spokesman for the government relief effort, said engineers were identifying areas at risk. ``If people sense anything funny, we hope they'll immediately go to an evacuation shelter,'' he said.
Rain also would add to the misery of thousands of homeless people camped in vacant lots and fields.
Troops rushed tents to the city in case rain forced more people to abandon their homes. Overcrowded hospitals, which also lacked heat and running water, geared up for new patients because of fears of an influenza outbreak; virtually all of the 1.4 million Kobe residents have no natural gas to keep warm.
Saturday was the first non-working day since the quake, and tens of thousands of residents of Osaka and other western cities took advantage of the weekend to head to Kobe to check on friends and relatives and bring them food, blankets and other supplies.
Ferries, trains and highways were jammed.
About 200 people were camped out under open skies at a soccer field. Several of them were busy Saturday erecting makeshift shelters out of plastic sheets they had found in case the predicted rains came.
Others in the group were foraging for food, which they shared with their fellow evacuees. ``We live together with the other people so we can survive this trauma together,'' said Masako Ohara.
The quake has prompted the Japanese to reconsider some of their long-cherished assumptions about the country's ability to use its technological prowess as a defense against nature.
Another quake - with a magnitude of 6.2 - shook Japan's northern island Hokkaido on Saturday, but there were no reports of casualties or damage. An aftershock measuring 4.1 jolted the Kobe area Saturday afternoon, but also caused no damage.
Makiko Tanaka, director general of the Science and Technology Agency, on Saturday urged a review of all Japanese nuclear plants because ``anything beyond imagination can happen.''
Japan has at least 47 nuclear reactors and intends to use nuclear power to provide 45 percent of its electricity by 2010, up from about 28 percent now.
Its plants are built to withstand quakes, but the damage to infrastructure caused by the Kobe temblor has raised doubts about Japanese construction standards.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB