Supplies being delivered by charter ship
The Great Hanshin Earthquake which struck at 05:46 in the morning of January 17th visited unprecedented damage to the Hanshin area. Kajima established disaster headquarters in the head office, the Osaka branch (currently the Kansai branch) and the Kobe district office immediately after the earthquake struck, and after confirming the safety of all employees and the extent of damage incurred by the company, we turned our attention to establishing an aid system for emergency recovery objectives. The following describes an outline of this and the progress attained.
The damage inflicted by the earthquake on Kajima-related concerns is as follows.
With regards to employee safety, of the 502 staff members living in the disaster area of Hyogo prefecture, 501 were verified as safe, but Yoshio Fukuda of the Kobe district office (deputy-manager of Kanden Isobe Shield JV) and his wife lost their lives. In addition to this, the houses of 205 staff members were totally or partially destroyed.
Despite the fact that the Kobe Commercial Trade Building, in which the
Kobe district office is located, was the first high-rise building to be
constructed in Kobe, it escaped with slight damage to its exterior and
the suspension of certain functions, but there was absolutely no
effect on the structure itself. Construction work on other facilities
experienced none or very little damage.
In addition to initiating surveys on the overall damage to Kajima in
the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, we also implemented surveys
into the damage incurred by buildings and other structures constructed
by Kajima in the past. We also received successive requests for aid
and emergency recovery services from our clients, and all employees
worked relentlessly to provide this. The number of such requests
exceeded 1,000 spread throughout the fields of civilengineering and
construction. In order to cater to these needs, Kajima established
relief groups centered around technicians from the head office and
other branches immediately after the earthquake struck and deployed
them successively into affected areas. A total of 221 staff members
were out in the field as of February 20th. We also initiated
modifications to our organizational structure in order to expand and
strengthen the functions of branches, with the result that from March
1st the Osaka branch office became the Kansai branch office and its
number of resident directors was increased by two. Plans are also in
the pipeline for gradually increasing the number of staff members in the Kansai region.
150 items of heavy machinery were moved into the affected areas by the
end of January, and another 700 were placed on stand-by to be deployed
the moment they were needed.
Five return trips are being plied between Kobe and Osaka by a charter
ship in order to ensure the delivery of supplies and the
transportation of personnel. Approximately one hour is required for
this, and it enables supplies to be transferred to the Kobe district office and the local disaster relief headquarters.
It is Kajima's policy to expend the resources of the entire
corporation in order to restore and revive the metropolitan functions
of the disasterarea.
Supplies being delivered by
charter ship
A fleet
of motorcycles which provide transportation within the city
Local disaster
headquarter
Emergency supplies stacked
within the office
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