The Shaking Stopped. Eighty Minutes Later, the Mall Exploded: What Kumamoto Reveals About the Disaster After the Disaster
The deadliest single moment of this week's Kumamoto earthquake didn't happen during the quake at all. Roughly 80 minutes after the ground stopped moving, an explosion tore through a shopping mall, collapsing part of the building and killing at least three of the 13 people confirmed dead so far. For anyone who lives in earthquake country — including tens of millions of Americans on the West Coast — that timeline is the real story here.
Bottom Line
THE BOTTOM LINE: Japan's Kumamoto earthquake killed at least 13 people, but its most sobering lesson is that the deadliest failure came after the shaking stopped — an explosion in a newly rebuilt mall, in the world's best-prepared earthquake nation. Disasters are increasingly cascade events, where the second and third failures kill as many as the first. Communities and households that plan only for the initial shock are planning for half the disaster.