Great Hanshin earthquake Damage from the Great Hanshin
Earthquake is kept intact at the Earthquake Memorial Park near
the port of Kobe. The elevated Hanshin Expressway, in the
background, was partially toppled by the earthquake.
|Date||January 17, 1995| |Depth||16 km (9.94 mi)|
|Epicenter||Awaji Island, Japan| |Countries or regions||Japan|
|Peak acceleration||0.8 g| |Casualties||6,434 killed, around
300,000 left homeless| The Great Hanshin earthquake, or Kobe
earthquake, occurred on Tuesday, January 17, 1995, at 05:46 JST
(January 16 at 20:46 UTC) in the southern part of Hyōgo
Prefecture, Japan. It measured 6.8 on the moment magnitude scale
(USGS), and Mj7.3 (adjusted from 7.2) on JMA magnitude scale.
The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The focus of
the earthquake was located 16 km beneath its epicenter, on the
northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the city of Kobe.
Approximately 6,434 people lost their lives (final estimate as
of December 22, 2005); about 4,600 of them were from Kobe. Am