The series of large earthquakes that hit Kumamoto Prefecture and surrounding areas since mid-April have caused extensive damage, killing dozens of people and destroying or damaging more than 80,000 houses and buildings. One month on, emergency responses have been carried out and local public services gradually restored, and the government's ¥778 billion extra budget is set to kick in soon to facilitate reconstruction. The Kumamoto temblors also highlight a need to accelerate long-advocated efforts to improve the quake-resistance of houses and other structures to minimize the loss of lives in such disasters.
In some ways, the Kumamoto quakes defied conventional wisdom based on Japan's modern experience with major temblors. Contrary to the typical pattern of a big temblor followed by a series of aftershocks in declining intensity and frequency, the first magnitude-6.5 quake that hit Kumamoto on the evening of April 14 — registering a maximum 7 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale — was followed by a much more powerful magnitude 7 temblor in the early hours of April 16 that increased the damage and greatly expanded the areas hit by the quakes. The aftershocks still continue, with the total number of quakes topping 1,400 since the first one struck.
More than half the 49 people killed by the quakes were either crushed or suffocated when their houses collapsed. In the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake that severely damaged Kobe and surrounding areas, the cause of death was the same for 80 percent of the more than 6,000 victims. The 1995 catastrophe led to calls for making houses more quake-proof to save lives. But in Mashiki, Kumamoto Prefecture, which is close to the epicenter of the quakes and suffered the most extensive damage, half the houses were destroyed. Most of these had been built before the Building Standards Law were updated in 1981 and damage was concentrated in structures that had not undergone additional work to bolster their resistance to quakes.