The Rebuilding of Ruined Places
The construction of these ruins will also be signs of the
End Times. As we dwelled upon in the previous section, in
the 20th century, many cities were reduced to rubbles and
thus re-constructed. European cities such as Berlin, Leningrad
(St. Petersburg) and Dresden that were ruined during the
Second World War were re-constructed after the war.
In 1995,
the earthquake that hit Kobe reduced the city
to heaps of rubble. As the photographs on the
right show, the city was soon reconstructed. |
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A similar example is the Kobe,
a Japanese city that was hit by a great earthquake in January
1995. In 30 years, the Japanese government and universities
invested 1 billion dollars into researches in order to develop
pre-alarming systems for earthquakes but they obviously
failed, for it is impossible to develop reliable models
that will distinguish all types of tremors of the earth.
The affected area, the region of Kobe and Osaka, is one
of the prominent industrial and commercial centers of Japan.
For this reason, the total economic impact of the Kobe Earthquake
was immense, amounting to billions of dollars. . Yet, despite
this loss, Japan reconstructed Kobe.
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(Above)
War devastated the city of Dresden in
1946 (Right) The reconstructed city of
Dresden in 1996. |
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(Small picture Above) The city of Tokyo was
ruined with the 8.3 magnitude earthquake in
1923 and the flames as an aftermath of the intense
shock waves. As the photographs reveal, the
city of Tokyo was rebuilt. |
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(Above)
The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco killed
3000 people and burned a great part of the city.
(Below) A view from the San Francisco city today. |
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* Restless Earth,
H.J.de Blij, M.H.Glantz, S.L.Harris, The National Geographic
Society, 1997, s.8
