Compose a 2250 words assignment on geohazard: effects of the kobe earthquake. Needs to be plagiarism free! The earthquake and the subsequent fires in Kobe caused 6,300 deaths, 30,000 injuries, 150,000 buildings destroyed and 300,000 people rendered homeless. The country made a loss of 200 billion dollars. The Kombi earthquake caused extensive damage to bridges and buried lifelines. The lifelines were concentrated near Osaka Bay in an area of soft soils and fill that amplified the earthquake motions. The transportation systems were disrupted by the failure of some utility poles and the collapse of story buildings that blocked most of the streets. There was a lot of damage to most important systems such as the gas and water systems, and power and communication systems (Anshe 1998).

One of the major damages that happened was on the power system. Kansai Electric power company services were serving the people of Kobe. The area which is 1.47 million metered has services of 500kV, 275kV, 154kV, and 77kV transmission and sub-transmission lines. The dead tank circuit breaker bushings were damaged. There was a massive failure of equipment anchorage that contributed to bushing damage. The earthquake indicated that if a site is subject to liquefaction the flexible bus should be used with liberal slack. The subsidence of the sites must have contributed to the failure of the bushings connected to vertical conductor drops since there is usually very little slack that is provided to such connections. The disruption of power was highly associated with the damage caused by the distribution system. Spun thin concrete poles were highly damaged by the ground vibrations, subsidence in liquefied soils, and by damage when hit by collapsed houses (Dickenson 1995).

The communication system in Kobe was also highly destroyed. Operations from the central office got disrupted when the regular power was lost and the emergency power was disrupted due to emergency power system damage. There was a loss of service to 285000 lines.