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Japan learned through a series of hard lessons, culminating 20 years ago, that it needed to make a more concerted effort to reduce the damage from earthquakes before they happened.

Although the country had made progress in improving seismic resiliency through improved building codes and early-warning systems, there was a major shift towards this preventative approach following the catastrophic 1995 earthquake in the south of Japan near Kobe, which killed more than 6,000 people.

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Investigation showed that more than 5,500 people had been killed in the collapse of buildings constructed before strengthened seismic standards were introduced in 1981.

“There was a call for a nationwide movement of disaster reduction,” Dr. Satoru Nishikawa, executive director of research for the Japan Center for Area Development Research, told a disaster forum at the University of B.C. this week.

In a chilling reminder Tuesday of earthquake risks along the so-called Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean basin, a powerful quake off the Japaense coast triggered tsunami warnings, later lifted, and injured at least a dozen people.