Kobe Braces for Landslides as Rain Hits Ruins

Wind and rain began pelting weary residents of this quake-stricken city today, triggering fears of landslides that abruptly sent hundreds of new evacuees fleeing to relief centers already overwhelmed by 300,000 refugees.

The grim weather, landslides and warnings of possible new tremors sent relief workers scurrying to protect food supplies and battered anew the spirit of victims who had endured Japan’s worst earthquake disaster in 70 years.

“Everyone is really upset, but we came here to avoid the worst,” said Sunao Kinugawa, 63. He and his wife were evacuated to the Uzugamori Elementary School late Saturday along with 100 other residents living in the affluent hills of Kobe.

Authorities urged residents of 13 areas in Kobe and neighboring cities to evacuate after Construction Ministry experts identified more than 800 points vulnerable to landslides.

A steady rainfall--the first since the quake--that began at 4 a.m. was expected to continue into the evening. Up to 2.4 inches was expected in some places.

Before the rains came, homeowners in Kobe and neighboring cities Saturday climbed atop their cracked and damaged dwellings to spread vinyl sheets in a desperate effort to protect their household belongings.

Adding to their nervousness, the government’s meteorological agency warned again Saturday that an aftershock with a magnitude as great as 6.0 could occur any time. At 9:12 p.m. Saturday, a magnitude-4.0 quake struck Awaji Island, center of Tuesday’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake. It was the strongest aftershock since Tuesday.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake unrelated to the Kobe area temblor also struck Saturday in the far-off northern island of Hokkaido. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

There was some good news Saturday. Three people--two 79-year-old men and a 63-year-old woman--were rescued from the rubble 100 hours after the quake struck.

“I shouted, ‘Help me, please!’ many times, and waited for rescuers to come,” Seizaburo Yoshida, one of the rescued men, was quoted by Kyodo News Agency as saying. He was trapped as the ceiling of his home caved in.

“I felt so hot and the debris on top of me was so heavy. I thought I would die,” he said.

Refugees were beginning to exceed the capacity of 1,059 relief centers in school gymnasiums and public halls in Kobe and neighboring cities. NHK television reported that 3,800 people were camping in 10 outdoor relief centers. Japanese Self Defense Force troops brought in 600 tents and set them up in parks or athletic grounds in temperatures hovering around 32 degrees at night.

In Kobe alone, officials said 234,400 people, or 13% of the city’s entire population, had sought refuge in emergency relief centers. In the most severely devastated ward of the city, 35% of the population had fled to the centers.

City officials and volunteers at the centers struggled to move supplies of bread and other relief goods susceptible to rain damage under tents or vinyl sheets.

At the Uzugamori relief center, Kinugawa’s wife, Etsuko, sat camped on old newspapers and blankets. “This is miserable,” she said. “They should have told us (about the weather dangers) sooner.”

Tuesday’s quake caved in the roof of the Kinugawa home, but the couple had decided to stay there after hearing reports of gangs looting ruins.

At 6 p.m. Saturday, however, firefighters drove through the neighborhood and announced the landslide warnings by loudspeaker. The couple had little time to gather their valuables and flee.

But the Kinugawas remained stoic.

“There are a lot of people worse off than us,” said Sunao Kinugawa. “Lots of people lost their homes completely.”

Akira Endo, Uzugamori School principal, said relief workers had scurried to obtain supplies after the first reports that a rainstorm might send vast numbers of new refugees into the shelter. Thanks to a donation Saturday from Gifu, a city about 90 miles northeast of Kobe, the shelter was adequately supplied.

Although the shelter had been deluged with 1,400 people the day of the quake, the number had dropped to 345 by Saturday, before the landslide warnings. As a result, the situation had eased somewhat and people who had only one rice ball twice a day were now getting three meals a day of milk, orange juice, eggs, bread and three rice balls.

Water also was in adequate supply, and relief workers announced today that people could begin to wash their faces.

Previously, many in Kobe were eating off dishes covered with plastic wrap to avoid having to wash them afterward. Nearby brooks had been serving as laundries, and broken pipes had supplied water.

With water service restored in many areas Saturday, restaurants, many using portable gas ranges, reopened for business. Smiling customers slurping up noodles--the first hot meal since Tuesday for many--were shown on TV.

One public bathhouse using water from a well reopened, attracting hundreds of men and women anxious to take their first bath since the quake.

Electricity was restored to all but 30,000 Kobe-area households by this morning, but more than 850,000 households remained cut off from gas supplies.

With no gas available to run crematoriums, corpses were being placed in coffins and flown by helicopter to Kyoto for cremation. But a shortage of wood to build coffins and of helicopters to transport them meant that rows of bodies were left lying at relief sites.

Makiko Tanaka, director general of the Science and Technology Agency, on Saturday urged a review of all Japanese nuclear plants because “anything beyond imagination can happen.”

Japan has 47 nuclear reactors and intends to use nuclear power to provide 45% of its electricity by 2010, up from about 28% now.

This afternoon, police put the toll at 4,924 dead and 25,493 injured. Until Saturday, more than 600 people had been reported missing. Then, for the first time, the number of missing dropped substantially to 201, and remained virtually unchanged for most of the day.

The magnitude of Tuesday’s temblor was reported as 7.2 by the Japanese, but scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., measure it at 6.8.

After four days in which only three of 29 offers of foreign aid were accepted, the government approved a series of contributions from South Korea, Finland, China, Australia, Brunei and Mongolia. Earlier, Japan accepted blankets from the United States and help from Swiss and French rescue units with search dogs.

Hospitals throughout the devastated area remained crippled. In the hours immediately after the Tuesday quake, patients filled all available beds, forcing doctors to put injured people on mattresses on the floor or even outside after treating them, doctors interviewed by NHK said.

Destruction to operating rooms and power failures has made operations and X-rays impossible. Many hospitals were operating with severe staff shortages, although 1,000 volunteer doctors and nurses from across the nation have gone to the devastated area.

On Saturday, 18 doctors and nurses from Southern California headed to Kobe to join the volunteer force. They expect to perform first aid, assist with surgery, treat infections and help prevent the outbreak of contagious diseases.

National Highway No. 2, the main operating artery into Kobe, was jammed Saturday with emergency vehicles trying to make their way into the port city of 1.5 million people. On Friday police had banned general traffic from the highway.

Thousands of people with backpacks and packages filled with supplies jammed Umeda Railway Station in Osaka on Saturday to travel to neighboring Nishinomiya, a city near Kobe that also suffered major damage.

Many said they were taking advantage of their first day off since the quake to take relief goods to friends and relatives in Nishinomiya or Kobe. With railways halted beyond Nishinomiya and buses unable to use roads filled with cracks and rubble, the only way into the center of Kobe, about 12 miles away, was a four-hour trip by foot.

Thousands of people, also carrying relief goods, jammed a pier in Osaka from which emergency ferry service to Kobe was operating.

Repairs on three separate railway sections were completed Saturday, opening a roundabout route to central Kobe for the first time since the quake.

Cranes were removing derailed train cars, and bulldozers were leveling out folded and cracked pavement in streets at Kobe’s city center. The main street in downtown Kobe still had not been reopened to traffic, however.

Workers repairing cracks and gaps in the pavement and removing fallen debris from streets faced additional dangers: Multistory buildings, their ground or mid-level floors squashed, were teetering perilously. Authorities were reportedly consulting with owners about destroying the buildings to ensure public safety.

In Tokyo on Saturday, Sadatoshi Ozato, newly appointed Cabinet minister in charge of the earthquake cleanup, proposed that Parliament enact a special law to restrict the rights of landowners so that Kobe could rebuild itself into “a city resistant against earthquakes.” He offered no details.

Although governments in Japan have the right of eminent domain to force property owners to sell land for public use, the right is seldom exercised.

Watanabe reported from Kobe and Jameson from Tokyo. Times staff writers Leslie Helm in Kobe and Jon D. Markman in Los Angeles contributed to this report.