WHY WERE OVER 5500 HUMAN LIVES LOST IN KOBE, HOW TO PROTECT IN FUTURE

The fundamental object of earthquake engineering, to protect human life against unavoidable natural disaster earthquake, was not attained at the recent Kobe Earthquake. There were lost over 5500 human life under peaceful asleep in their sweet homes. The fundamental object was not attained, in spite of the early warning of the existences of such dangers by the auther and in spite of highly advanced knowledge of earthquake engineering. The main reason of this tragedy is that almost all of these killed dwellers lived in Illegal Old Weak The Building Standard Law System in Japan allows the existence of such Illegal Past-Permitted Old Weak Houses as the exemption from the application of the amended new Enforcement Order which was based upon the newly developed results of earthquake engineering. The retrofitting of these weak houses are very important and urgent problem to be solved, but it is very difficult because of the high expences. Only by the efforts endeavor of owners of retrofitting of dwellers may be perfectly impossible to retrofitt their Illegal Past-Permitted Weak Houses. This difficulty is clearly shown the fact that the promotion of retrofitting in the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, have made no progress in these three years at all untill today. Without retrofitting of Illegal Weak Houses, it will be perfectly impossible to realize the fundamental object of earthquake engineering, to protect human life against earthquake.