KOBE -- More than 6,400 people died, 250,000 buildings collapsed and fire razed 7,000 homes over 64 hectares of land. But, according to Yoshiteru Murosaki, a professor at Kobe University's Research Center for Urban Safety and Security, we have yet to learn any lessons from the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
Nearly 90 percent of the quake victims died under the rubble, and Murosaki believes it was poor city planning and shoddy construction that raised the death toll so high.
After studying 400,000 structures in the region following the quake on Jan. 17, 1995, he has concluded that no fundamental changes have been made to prevent an equal number of casualties and deaths occuring in a similar emergency.