Kobe Earthquake Research Paper

While an earthquake the size of the Kobe quake in 1995; 7.3 on the Richter scale (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica), can be expected to cause wide spread damage, Japan did validate that building codes can be an effective mitigation tool. While upwards of 100,000 wood manufactured older homes collapsed during the 20 second earthquake, a large majority of the newer construction buildings remained intact (Todi, Hataya, Abe, & Miyakoshi, 1995). Certainly, building codes implemented in Japan were effective, consequently there were many other mitigation opportunities missed. While there had not been a recent earthquake in this location, past history had shown that this area was susceptible to strong earth movements as recently as the