YEAR 9 KOBE EARTHQUAKE ASSIGNMENT

This page ARCHIVED - July 2008

Assignment

You need to answer the following question:

Marks Scheme

The project will be marked out of 10. This will be based on a series of factors:

- whether you have answered the question in the title

- the quality of presentation and how you set out the work: causes and effects

- the way in which you have used the various sources of information you will be presented with

- the structure of the report: this should have the following sections:

a) Why and where the earthquake happened

b) What the effects were

c) How well prepared you think the Japanese people were

d) How well people coped with the disaster

Useful web links

One place to start is the PLATE TECTONICS section of my KEY STAGE 3 links. Some of these are general, and you could spend a lot of time without finding specific information on Kobe.

There are lots of resources as long as you use appropriate search strings: "Kobe earthquake" is a good one. An Image search on GOOGLE would also produce lots of useful images and maps. Go to GOOGLE.CO.UK, and click on the IMAGES section of the search box. This produces over 200 images.

Information on the MERCALLI SCALE here. This is an alternative to the Richter Scale. A search using the term 'Richter Scale' provides all you need to know.

Remember that the BBC and other news sites will have archived articles. Try a SEARCH using the term 'Kobe earthquake' (not surprisingly..) on sites such as BBC NEWS, or CNN.

Some useful sites:

• A very technical report, but has some good images, courtesy of EQE.

• A Finnish site with some facts.

• Another fairly technical site on the EARTHQUAKE. Don't just copy and paste large sections with words you don't understand.

• Useful notes  HERE thanks to David Rayner. These are recommended.

• Some EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS here.

• Another fairly technical site, but a good one: ANDY's EARTHQUAKE PAGE.

• A photo page from JAPAN GUIDE.

• http://www.nola.com/speced/ruinandrecovery/t-p/index.ssf?/speced/ruinandrecovery/articles/kobe1.html - fantastic article on the recovery of Kobe.

Other resources

Other useful resources will include:

- Textbooks: Key Geography for GCSE, Interactions, Complete Geography.

- Worksheets: you will be issued with outline maps of Japan, details on the quake, photocopies of newspaper reports

- You will see news bulletins from the day of the earthquake and in the days following the fires from BBC and ITN news (the days before 24 hour news channels...)

Remember not to just copy and paste large sections from the Internet without reading them first.

 The best thing to do is to make notes and bullet points.

The final project will form part of the teacher assessment of your National Curriculum level in Geography. This will be added to information gained from your exam mark, exercise book, and contributions in class.

Extra information:

Now that the reports are in, here's some extra information for anyone doing a KOBE assignment, on the final parts of the question: how well did the Japanese cope and what lessons were learnt ?

1. Earthquake wrecked the nation's confidence in the Government's ability to cope in a crisis

2. Many people ran out of buildings and were hit by falling debris or wandered through the streets.

3. On video: one parent says she hadn't seen her children since they told her they were 'going out to watch the fires...' !

4. Official response was slow: a 5 hour delay before calling in the Army, and only 200 troops were brought into action

5. The Government took several days to declare the area a 'disaster zone' so that it could receive special emergency relief

6. The electricity supply was cut off for days and not repaired

7. There were delays in accepting foreign offers of help.

8. Total reconstruction cost was in excess of $120 billion

9. Jobs were lost in the port area, and companies such as Sumitomo and Kawasaki moved away from the area. Office capacity has also been reduced, as hundreds of buildings were demolished but only a few have been replaced

10. The car industry uses a 'Just in time' system to cut costs. This meant there were few spare parts. A factory near Kobe was damaged, which meant that car production was disrupted.

11. There have been a high number of suicides since the earthquake

12. Only 7% of people in the city were covered by earthquake insurance - the Government has paid to rebuild the infrastructure e.g the Hanshin expressway, which has been rebuilt, but no money has gone to individuals

13. England football team trained on Awaji island, where the earthquake began, during the 2002 World Cup finals.

Details from "Hazards and Responses" 2nd edition by Victoria Bishop  (Collins, 2001)

The NATIONAL CURRICULUM Action site now has a section on how to assess a pupil's LEVEL at the end of Key Stage 3.

Recently came across a company which makes a quake bed. When the ground starts to tremble, a protective pyramid of material springs up automatically and protects the occupant of the bed from anything falling from above. Yours for just 1.75 million yen.

Your piece of work should really include the answers to the following questions:

1. Which plates meet in Japan (note: around a half of all the earthquakes that occur in the world occur in and around Japan)

2. When and where was the last major earthquake to hit the area, or Japan as a whole and what happened there ?

3. What preparations did the Japanese make ?

MARKING

We will be applying a LEVEL as well as a mark out of 10 to this piece of work by looking for particular types of content, rather than specific things that you are saying... The sort of levels you might expect for particular types of answer are shown below:

RETURN TO KEY STAGE 3 PAGE