The Great Hanshin earthquake, or Kobe earthquake, was an earthquake that occurred on Tuesday, January 17, 1995, at 05:46 JST in the southern part of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. It measured 6.8 on the Moment magnitude scale (USGS), and Mj7.3 (adjusted from 7.2) on JMA magnitude scale. The tremors lasted for approximately 20 seconds. The focus of the earthquake was located 16 km beneath its epicenter, on the northern end of Awaji Island, 20 km away from the city of Kobe. Approximately 6434 people lost their lives (final estimate as of December 22, 2005); about 4600 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 since the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which claimed 140000 lives. It caused approximately ten trillion yen in damage, 2.5% of Japan's GDP at the time. Based on the average currency conversion rate over the following 500 days of 97.545 yen per USD, the quake caused 2.5 billion in damage.
Keywords: seconds from disaster, Kobe earthquake
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