Survivors Now Realizing Scope of Kobe Damage

Near the gate of this city’s Chinatown, a chef at the Tonboku restaurant rolls and cuts dough on a table in the street. Two other cooks stir dumplings in large caldrons heated by propane gas tanks outside the restaurant.

In normal times, dumplings are a standard item on the menu. But now, with customers lined up in the street, Tonboku is rationing them. Six steamed dumplings and three boiled dumplings are the limits for each customer.

Nearly two weeks after an earthquake killed more than 5,000 people and devastated an area stretching 60 miles from the outskirts of Osaka to the island of Awaji, any hot meal--dumplings included--is still a luxury in this city that has ceased to function as an urban center.

The devastation has exceeded by so great a margin the capacity of Kobe officials to cope with it that providing even the most basic amenities remains a challenge. Rehabilitation can be tackled only in stages. And uncertainty pervades nearly every aspect of the future.

The situation is much the same in the neighboring cities of Ashiya, Amagasaki and Nishinomiya.

Even as a nationwide rescue effort has begun to gain momentum after a sluggish start, the full dimensions of the disaster are just beginning to sink in for stunned survivors here.

“It took 50 years to transform Kobe into the beautiful city we had. Now we’re back to zero,” said Hikoji Kotani, who constructs Japanese-style gardens.

“The devastation is total,” said Kisao Takada, a taxi driver.

It extends far beyond the nearly 90,000 buildings and homes officially recorded as destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Hardly a structure escaped damage, and property owners wishing to make even the simplest of repairs will either have to pay steep fees or wait for months to get the work done.

Even now, gas remains cut off to all of Kobe and several neighboring cities. Only half of Kobe’s 1.5 million people are getting supplies of water.

Nearly every aspect of business and daily life has been crippled: port facilities, streets and roads inside the city, railways, subways, buses, taxis, schools, business operations and medical care. Even food and a hot bath have become major goals of daily subsistence.

Kumiko Mori, a hotel employee and one of Tonboku’s customers, said she walked 20 minutes from her apartment to buy dumplings after she saw a television news report on the street operations of the Chinese restaurant.

Only householders with cooking devices that don’t depend on city gas supplies can prepare hot food, and Mori said she is not one of those lucky few. In addition, just buying food is a problem, she said.

While grocery and convenience stores are operating at scattered locations throughout the city, “they are not well stocked,” Mori said. “It’s ironic, but those of us who can stay in our own homes are having trouble finding food, while supplies are now plentiful for the people staying at the evacuation camps.”

During a weekend drive along a stretch of about 10 miles on one of Kobe’s three major streets, only three eateries were seen operating: a McDonald’s, a doughnut shop and a noodle shop, which, like Tonboku, was operating on the street.

At one location, Masatoshi Kita had erected a prefab shed in which he was selling goods he had salvaged from the wreckage of his drugstore. Deliveries of new merchandise were being made--but only sporadically. Wholesalers in Osaka, moreover, have run out of sanitary products, cleaning alcohol and toilet paper, he said.

Television and radio stations in Kobe are broadcasting schedules for men and women to use facilities at the handful of public bathhouses operating in the city--10 minutes for men, 20 minutes for women. Only bathhouses supplied by wells and heated with coal (and now earthquake debris) are open.

In downtown Kobe, one of the few buildings that was open and operating last week was City Hall’s new wing, a 30-story structure completed in 1989.

As workers removed wheelbarrow loads of broken glass, officials continued to work in the annex despite questions about that building’s safety, while the old City Hall sat useless and crushed.

Interrupting a lucrative business that attracts mainly Japanese tourists, all of Kobe’s hotels remain closed, mainly because of a lack of water and gas. Hundreds of Japanese and foreign journalists have been making a six-hour two-way commute from Osaka daily or sleeping on the floor in hallways and conference rooms at the City Hall annex.

Garbage hasn’t been collected since the earthquake in many areas, and city officials confess that they don’t have the equipment to catch up with the growing mountains of garbage bags on street corners everywhere. One official estimated that since the quake, residents have put out 100 times the normal amount of garbage, including debris that the city’s compact trucks can’t handle.

On Friday, a pile of garbage bags was stacked six feet high in front of City Hall itself.

With the help of garbage trucks dispatched from all over Japan, however, city officials hope to get collections back to normal by the end of February.

Only Saturday did the national government announce that it will join local governments in paying for the removal of an estimated 11 million tons of debris from wrecked buildings for both homeowners and small businesses. The only exceptions will be large enterprises and any owners who want their debris removed in a hurry.

No estimate was offered for how long the cleanup will take, and the government said it will set its own priorities. Rubble will be dumped into the sea, Kobe officials said.

Although a widely feared flu epidemic has not erupted yet, damage to hospitals throughout the city and more than 25,000 injuries to residents in the devastated area left medical services grossly overtaxed. Every day, announcements on radio and TV inform residents which hospitals are accepting admissions--and most are not.

Kobe’s four major department stores were damaged so badly that all four have given up trying to reopen operations in their present buildings. One wing of the Sogo Department Store was split in half, from top to bottom.

Thousands of Kobe residents who work in other cities resumed their commutes last week but were forced to struggle through rides on temporary bus routes that took about two hours to reach the nearest operating railway station.

Most companies based in Kobe still have not opened for business. Banks, post offices and gas stations are the only forms of business widely operating. (All gas stations in Japan are required by law to store their gasoline in underground tanks.)

An uphill struggle is expected in reopening any of Kobe’s multitude of tiny factories.

Haruhisa Kato, the son of a shoe-factory owner, said the plant will start operations today but added, “We’re not certain who our customers will be.”

Only five of 35 surrounding shoe factories survived the quake and the fires that leveled the neighborhood right up to the edge of the Kato factory, he said.

Another problem will come with promissory notes due for payment at the end of the month. “If we receive payment of only 50% of the notes that are due to us, we’ll be able to pay only 50% of the notes we owe to others,” Kato said.

Noting the fields of ashes in his neighborhood, Kato said factory operators can’t rely on the government to help them. “I saw mass-media helicopters flying above us right after the earthquake, but I didn’t see a Self-Defense Forces helicopter until the sixth day,” he said.

Although it took most of the first week after the quake to mobilize 16,000 Self-Defense Forces troops, the soldiers are now providing water and toilet services and bringing in much of the emergency food supply to nearly 270,000 refugees throughout the disaster zone.

In Kobe itself, the number of people living in evacuation centers in unheated gymnasiums and in tents in parks dropped to 213,072 people Sunday, from a peak of 235,443 on Tuesday.

Those who left are believed to have sought refuge with relatives and friends.

Exactly how many new living units are needed is still not known. But so far, applications for temporary housing that authorities have just started accepting have outnumbered the availability of living units by ratios of as much as 10 to 1.

An unprecedented outpouring of offers of rent-free rooms or apartments from home and apartment owners was shown on television over the weekend in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area.

One real estate agent, who himself was made homeless by the earthquake, warned that the appearance of stoic forbearance that is still seen in the refugee camps could crumble if housing is not found for everyone.

“People are still acting as if they can be controlled easily. But that’s only on the surface. . . . They fear their names will be stricken from the lists (for temporary housing) if they make noise now,” said Shozo Takahashi, who was living at an evacuation center with his daughter. His wife and son, he said, had gone to stay with his parents.

Contractors from as far away as Sendai in northeastern Japan have already finished more than half of the construction of prefabricated 300-square-foot living units that will be offered to the homeless rent-free for up to a year. The only charges will be for utilities and municipal services provided to the new clusters of homes, many of them being built on school playgrounds or in city parks.

Also yet to be calculated is the toll the quake may impose on employment.

Real estate agent Takahashi, for example, predicted that the supply of dwellings in Kobe that he would ordinarily find renters for will all but vanish. “I may have to go to work as a taxi driver or construction worker,” he said.

Koichi Umemoto, 35, a port worker, said “a lot of people will be forced to leave Kobe to seek new jobs,” and he fears he may be one of them. Container-loading operations in which he has specialized, he said, are likely to move to Osaka.

“I was born and grew up here. I don’t want to leave. But if there is no choice, I guess I’ll have to go,” he said.