Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A number of simultaneous post-earthquake fires occurred in the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake. In terms of fire incidence in regions heavily affected by the earthquake, fires occurred almost evenly in proportion to the ratio of damaged structures even other than Nagata-ward in Kobe city where major conflagrations were concentrated. This fact indicates that most of the post earthquake fires were suppressed in their early stage by fire brigades. The reason for concentration of very large fires in Nagata-ward is not only high incidence of fires there, but also higher risks of fire spread attributed to city configuration, i.e. ratio of wooden structures and average distance between adjacent buildings in that region. In addition, the performance of firefighting activity in the early stage is another key factor to the difference of fire damage by region. When the number of initial fires exceeds the number of engines available, extremely large fire sizes result in urban areas.