DEVASTATING JOLT IN JAPAN : Quake-Hit Kobe Finally Gets Aid : Japan: After days of paralyzing confusion, relief convoys arrive every few minutes in the stricken city. Thirty-five people rescued, but death toll passes 4,600.

TOKYO — The ordeal of 300,000 refugees from Japan’s massive earthquake eased somewhat Friday, with relief finally flowing into the stricken port of Kobe and other devastated areas.

For the first time since the Tuesday quake, deliveries of food and other relief goods increased, with aid convoys arriving in Kobe every few minutes.

Grocery stores reopened, inspectors began to decree damaged buildings unsafe, and workers started carting away the rubble left by the killer temblor. Ferries launched operations to Osaka, and some of the super-speed bullet trains resumed partial operation.

The bullet train line reopened from Tokyo to Osaka. Until Friday morning, damage on train lines had forced the route to stop short of Osaka, at the ancient city of Kyoto.

Throughout the quake area, work crews dismantled collapsed bridges and elevated expressways so giant cranes could lift them away.

Police imposed travel restrictions in hopes of unclogging the traffic jams that are hampering the movement of emergency vehicles.

And Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, promising to “take every necessary financial measure” to rebuild the crippled Kobe region, ordered one of his Cabinet ministers to drop all other duties to concentrate on rescue and rehabilitation.

Murayama said he will “restructure disaster relief policies for the whole of Japan.”

After conceding that his government had been in “confusion” trying to cope with the aftermath of the quake, Murayama made the vow in a speech to Parliament.

But he offered no outlook as to when normality might return for quake survivors, who he said are being “forced to live as anxious refugees in bitter cold, with not enough to eat” and without water, gas or electricity.

Moderate aftershocks continued to shudder through the Kobe-Osaka area in the wake of the 6.8-magnitude quake--the nation’s worst disaster since World War II. The magnitude was reported as 7.2 by the Japanese, but scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., measure it at the lower figure.

And the death toll from the nation’s worst post-World War II disaster continued to climb. As post-quake day No. 5 began this morning, police said 4,612 people were killed and 24,649 were injured, with an additional 501 still missing. Thirty-five people were rescued from the rubble Friday, according to authorities in Kobe.

Meanwhile, port facilities in Kobe that handle 30% of Japan’s exports and imports lay in ruins, and more than 46,000 buildings and homes have been destroyed or severely damaged. Estimates of material losses range up to $80 billion.

Despite the partly reopened rail routes, train and bus service into and out of the most severely damaged areas remained suspended.

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Many residents who lost their homes or feared staying in them continued to flock to relief centers, most of which are set up in unheated public buildings. At many of the centers, running water was still unavailable.

Japanese from across the country have mailed so many relief packages to Kobe City Hall that the city sent many of them back to the Kobe central post office for storage. City officials said they do not have enough space to keep the packages and do not have enough staffers to open them.

After surveying all local governments in the Kobe-Osaka area, NHK-TV reported that the number of refugees at 1,059 relief centers grew to 300,000 by Friday night. The night before, 270,000 people had taken refuge at the centers, NHK said.

At one unheated center, more than 4,000 people slept shoulder to shoulder on mattresses next to strangers, in temperatures hovering around 32 degrees. Fears mounted that a wave of illnesses might break out.

The disposal of corpses was also posing problems; no cremations or burials have yet been reported. Garbage has not been collected since Tuesday. And with no running water, sanitation problems are mounting.

Officials said they will provide people with temporary shelter in prefabricated homes or in empty apartments in public housing complexes but added that they still have not set standards for people who would be eligible to apply.

Forecasters predicted that the first rainfall since the quake would come today, threatening landslides in hilly sections already weakened by the earthquake. In Kobe, 150 families were evacuated from their homes Friday as underground water started to spring up from new cracks in the ground.

Construction Minister Koken Nosaka told Parliament that conditions are bad enough to create a panic, and he thanked the refugees for their perseverance.

A woman in her 20s who told an NHK interviewer that she had come to Kobe to visit relatives said she felt “as if I were visiting a battlefield.”

Despite Murayama’s assignment of full-time crisis-management duties to one of his Cabinet ministers, Sadatoshi Ozato, turf battles among Japanese bureaucracies--with no one making decisions at the top--were reported to be hampering rescue efforts.

Bureaucratic infighting was also suspected in Japan’s reluctance to accept donations that Foreign Ministry spokesman Terusuke Terada said had been offered by 27 countries and two international organizations. A Swiss Embassy official here said Japan rejected an offer of search dogs one day but accepted it the next.

Quarantine rules supervised by one ministry initially interfered with another agency’s desire to deploy the search dogs, one official said.

From the United States, Japan has accepted only a gift of 52,000 blankets from the military, despite President Clinton’s “open-ended” offer of assistance.

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Beneath the Rubble

Buildings brought down by earthquakes often leave pockets of space that can trap survivors--sometimes saving their lives. Here is how rescuers are digging out survivors:

1) Seeking survivors

Victims are sought out by an emergency crew and specially trained dogs. Electronic devices are also used to search for and monitor trapped victims.

2) Cutting through

Rescuers use axes and several types of saws to cut away floors, beams, ceilings and walls of every room looking for survivors.

3) Caring for victims

Vital signs are checked and urgent treatment administered before victim is removed.

Source: Times staff