61905 We hope that issue of earthquake-resistance will be re-examined with extreme care and addressed urgently.
61906 It is eerie that there has been a series of substantial earthquakes lately.
61907 There have been four earthquakes within a short span of time: the Kushiro-oki Earthquake in January of the year before last, the Hokkaido Nansei-oki Earthquake in July of the same year, the Hokkaido Toho-oki Earthquake in October last year, followed by the Sanriku-haruka-oki Earthquake two months later.
61908 Under these circumstances, some seismologists pointed out that, "the quiet period for earthquakes has ended and it is possible that the active period has begun," but there has been no evidence of proactive anti-earthquake measures taken by the government being alarmed by the situation.
61909 We wonder if there was a negligence among those involved as none of those four quakes struck overpopulated cities and, in addition, all of the epicenters were far away from land.
61910 The forecast for the active period for earthquakes is being substantiated in an ominous way.
61911 Regarding the southern Kanto region that has been suggested to be "in imminent danger of a near-field earthquake," an urgent countermeasure is needed.
61912 The Tokyo Metropolitan Government conducted a study four years ago on the anticipated damage in the event of an earthquake in the same magnitude of the Great Kanto Earthquake.
61913 According to the study, the anticipated numbers would reach 9,400 deaths and 140,000 injured in Tokyo.
61914 Forty percent of buildings would be damaged and three million people would be forced to live in evacuation shelters.
61915 Furthermore, it was assumed that "expressways would not collapse" at that time.
61916 Now, after the Great Hanshin Earthquake, a drastic review of this study is called for.
61917 It was the second postwar historic disaster after the Fukui Earthquake in 1948 that killed over 3,700 people.
61918 We have to insist once again that we should first concentrate our efforts in the rescue and relief work as well as the speedy restoration of the lifelines at the disaster area.