Why did so many people die in the Kobe earthquake?
by seb sim Kobe is located in the south west of the Japanese island of Honshu in Asia on the 17 th of January 1995 at 5:46 am, the Japanese city of Kobe was hit by the worst earthquake since 1923 earthquake. The earthquake was 7.2 magnitude on the Richter scale. The focus was about 19 km below sea level which is a very shallow earthquake and the epicentre was between Awaji Island and Kobe in the Akashi straits. Japan is on the ring of fire a deadly circle of fault lines the Eurasian plate boundary is a continental plate which means its made of granite which is a hard rock and the Philippine and Pacific plate boundaries which are oceanic plates which are made from a soft rock called basalt. The Philippine and pacific plate boundaries bashed together with the Eurasian plate boundary, when this happened it caused a destructive plate boundary which lead to the Philippine and pacific plat boundaries subducted under the Eurasian plate. When this happened shock waves ran trough the densely po
