One year to the day after the January 17th 1994 Los Angeles earthquake , it was Japan's turn, precisely the harbour city of Kobe, South of Japan, with 1.5 million inhabitants to experience the disastrous effects of an earthquake. Even the clock of a nearby building of Kobe's City hall freezed at 4:30 am, when the powerful fault woke up on all its length and triggered a 40-second earthquake of magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale.
Everything is done to obtain authorities' blank-seing for intervention. After 3 long days of difficult negotiations , japanese authorities finally accepted french assistance. We got into Kobe by sea route as the road network was heavily congested. The earthquake wrought havoc on the quays, cars were immersed …
The stricken area, in the eastern part of the city, was subject to Kobe City Council authorities agreement. It was heavily affected and interventions were quite few.  The authorities gave their approval for victim search with listening devices but demanded that care be provided only in the presence of a Japanese doctor.
On the way to our intervention zone , we crossed devastated neighbourhoods, Kobe's main highway was torn apart, wood and cob houses totally destroyed … On a japanese couple's request , we searched a house rubbles for potential survivers of their family, nobody was found alive unfortunately. We made repeated listening operations in the district around road 43, they were unsuccessful.The balance kept growing and was finally estimated at more than 6000 deaths, mainly in individual houses of popular districts.