Japan marks 30th anniv of deadly Kobe quake

AFP :

Thousands of people marked on Friday the 30th anniversary of an earthquake that claimed more than 6,400 lives and levelled much of the Japanese city of Kobe.
The 7.2-magnitude quake on January 17, 1995, sparked a major review of quake preparedness in the island nation that suffers about one fifth of the world’s most powerful tremors.
Mourners observed a moment of silence before dawn at 5:46 am, the exact time that the quake — Japan’s second deadliest since World War II — struck the port city.
“Whenever I see someone who looks like one of them, I feel it might be one of them,” a man who lost his mother and sister in the disaster told public broadcaster NHK.
“I’ve been living like this for 30 years,” he said.
The quake buried residents in thousands of flattened buildings and uprooted highway overpasses and train tracks, while fires raged through collapsed timber houses.
Heavy damage to the busy harbour area dealt a severe blow to Kobe’s economy, sparking a population exodus over the following months and years.
Japan experiences more than 1,000 earthquakes every year. The vast majority are harmless but occasional large ones can still cause enormous damage and loss of life.
In 2011, a 9.0 magnitude quake triggered a huge tsunami that smashed into the northeast coast, killing around 18,000 people and sparking the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe in a generation.
The Ishikawa region is still struggling to recover from a huge New Year’s Day earthquake last year that killed around 500 people and destroyed houses and infrastructure.