Abstract
An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occured north of Awaji Island on January 17th, 1995, at 5: 46 a.m.
We started, immediately after the earthquake, an investigation of its damage, covering the remains of wooden houses and reinforced concrete buildings in the Kobe area.
The investigation result indicate that the earthquake damage was generally distributed in a belt or island form, depending on the grade of seismic intensity, 1.5-2.0kilometers wide in the east-to-west direction from the JR Kobe line in the north to the Kobe highway line in the south.
The relationships between bulding damage and earth movement were found to have been very complicated by the influence of geological structure, topography, distance from seismic center, classification of sedimentary deposit, active faults, etc, upon one another.
