Word: kobe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...initial rescue effort was slow to get moving, adding to the human tragedy, the clearance-and-rebuilding campaign was not. Thousands of workers and battalions of heavy equipment streamed into Kobe. The government announced it had begun building 19,000 housing units, though that will fall far short of present needs. Most important, Kobe's residents seemed to be recovering their native determination. ``People seem calmer,'' said Ichizo Kubo, 74, the owner of a building-supply shop. ``They have shared the experience of the quake and seem ready to work together...
...boomlet of sorts was already visible. Kobe's streets filled with men wearing hard hats and the distinctive uniforms of Japan's leading construction firms. Mammoth earthmovers and jackhammers chipped away at the wreckage of collapsed buildings, while welders fused support bars to cracked and buckled overpasses. Workers were clearing rubble and forging new routes around it. Akio Himeji, an executive of the Yoshida Gumi, a marine- construction company, supervised a pumping operation at the docks to provide emergency water supplies. ``I think,'' he says, ``the next few years will be like the postwar recovery. Our company grew...
...Japanese corporations in the Hanshin area around Kobe feared at first they had been grievously wounded. The quake halted production at two of Kobe Steel's plants, but one of them went back into operation last week, and the other will be shut down for only a month or so. Toyota and Mazda, expecting no deliveries of parts from the Kobe area, closed several auto plants, then reopened them because supplies arrived...
...Lilly's main plant is still working but a new one, due to open this month, will need weeks of repair. Hewlett-Packard's electronics plant went back to work at 60% capacity last week. ``Shoot,'' says Dorwin Larsen, general manager of the Shin Caterpillar Mitsubishi joint venture in Kobe, ``it's not that significant in the big picture, even if we can't make...
...other companies and investors in the U.S. were worried about how the quake would affect their networks. The main risk is in the near collapse of a major export center and container port. Kobe handled 2.7 million containers a year; it was the hub for 31% of all shipments to and from the U.S. ``A lot of goods that normally flow smoothly,'' says Stephen Roach, co-director of global economics at Morgan Stanley in New York City, ``are going through a major bottleneck. This could have ripple effects...