page_title: Great Hanshin earthquake
section_title: Response
hierarchical_section_title: Great Hanshin earthquake / Response
caption_attribution_description: Memorial to those killed in the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Biwa Block, Nada Ward, Kobe city. Text reads "あの刻を忘れない Ano toki wo wasurenai" which roughly translates to "not forget that time" or "We won't forget that time". Followed by the date of the incident.
context_page_description: The Great Hanshin earthquake, or Kobe earthquake, occurred on January 17, 1995 at 05:46:53 JST in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, including the region known as Hanshin. It measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum intensity of 7 on the JMA Seismic Intensity Scale. The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was located 17 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the center of the city of Kobe.
  Up to 6,434 people lost their lives; about 4,600 of them were from Kobe. Among major cities, Kobe, with its population of 1.5 million, was the closest to the epicenter and hit by the strongest tremors. This was Japan's worst earthquake in the 20th century after the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which claimed more than 105,000 lives.
context_section_description: Approximately 1.2 million volunteers were involved in relief efforts during the first three months following the earthquake. Retailers such as Daiei and 7-Eleven used their existing supply networks to provide necessities in affected areas, while NTT and Motorola provided free telephone service for victims. Even the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza syndicate was involved in distributing food and supplies to needy victims.
  Local hospitals struggled to keep up with demand for medical treatment, largely due to collapsed or obstructed "lifelines" (roads) that kept supplies and personnel from reaching the affected areas. People were forced to wait in corridors due to the overcrowding and lack of space. Some people had to be operated on in waiting rooms and corridors.
  
  To help speed the recovery effort, the government closed most of the Hanshin Expressway network to private vehicles from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm daily and limited traffic to buses, taxis and other designated vehicles. To keep the light rail system running even though it had quite severely damaged sections, shuttle buses were commissioned to transfer patrons to stations around damaged sections.
caption: Local memorial in Kobe. "We won't forget that time"
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