Word: kobe
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Such optimism remained limited, for Kobe simply will not be able to pull itself up by the bootstraps easily. The city is so important to Japanese commerce that authorities almost certainly will make heroic efforts to restore dockyards, highways and railways as soon as possible. The central government will furnish up to 90% of the money needed to repair the public infrastructure, and big companies like Toyota and Matushita Electric, some of whose local operations were knocked out briefly by the quake, were recovering quickly. But relatively few small businesses and homeowners were covered by earthquake insurance. The shock...
Another imponderable is how long it will take to restore Kobe's housing. Some 55,000 apartments and houses were wrecked. Although the government immediately began erecting 18,600 prefabricated units in school yards, construction will fall well short of present needs. Only 3% of all households in Hyogo prefecture, which includes Kobe, were covered by earthquake insurance. Even people who can afford to build a new home are likely to be stymied at first by a moratorium on postquake construction, a policy intended to avert slapdash projects and allow time for possible new building-code and zoning strictures...
Such realizations punctured some of the early forecasts of a silver lining in Kobe's tragedy. Even as heavily hit manufacturers like Kobe Steel had to absorb further jolts on the stock market, construction-industry issues were hot prospects on the Tokyo exchange. After the Nikkei index's steep dip early last week, bidding on these shares helped the exchange recover 318 points by the close of trading on Friday. But the boomlet of hope in the ashes was not enough to convince more sober heads...
...magnitude of Kobe's damage will surely divert large amounts of money from other Japanese projects. Said Mark Brown, a construction-industry analyst for BZW Securities in Tokyo: ``Big damage doesn't necessarily mean good news for construction companies. It's certainly no cause for dancing in the streets.'' In the U.S., a letter writer to the New York Times expressed the same skepticism. Economics professor Thomas Martin wrote, ``If we accept this fallacy, we should also expect to see bombing campaigns included in the next fiscal-stimulus package.'' A rebuilding project that will not want for money is Kobe...
...quake had clearly wrought damage on a grand scale to a port that handled 2.7 million containers last year, including 31% of all exports to the U.S. While shipping lines rerouted their cargo via other ports, Kobe-area manufacturers of products from steel to flat-panel computer displays studied ways to get their goods on the road. Commented Yasuo Iwamoto, marketing chief for the Kobe Port Authority: ``The fact is that Kobe was the container center for Japan. In the long term, I doubt that other ports can take the load we divert to them...