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kumamoto

Post-earthquake Kumamoto in Google Earth 3D

In April this year, the city of Kumamoto, Japan, suffered a series of large earthquakes. Google managed to capture aerial imagery of the city essentially during the event, after the first major event but before the largest shock and then captured another set of imagery from after the event. We had a look at what damage could be seen in the imagery, including a large number of landslides, collapsed buildings and a derailed train. From the overhead imagery it wasn’t easy to see the extent of the damage to buildings, even though we knew, based on ground level imagery, that there was severe damage in some locations. Now Google has updated the 3D imagery for part of Kumamoto with imagery captured after the event, and the extent of the damage to buildings is much clearer, especially because the roofs have been patched with light blue tarpaulin that is highly visible.


The suburb of Mashiki was the worst hit, and many houses are damaged beyond repair.


A historical building known as Janes’ Residence was completely destroyed. The rubble has been covered in the light blue tarpaulins

The Janes’ Residence was the first western-style house built in Kumamoto dating from 1871. It used to be in the grounds of Kumamoto Castle, but has been moved a number of times. Read more about it here.


Kumamoto Castle was badly damaged by the earthquake.

We have also created a Google Earth tour of the area showing all the light blue roofs, which you can view in Google Earth with this KML file or see in the YouTube video below.

The Kumamoto earthquakes

Google has been pushing out imagery updates almost weekly recently. The latest update includes imagery from Kumamoto, Japan, which suffered a series of large earthquakes in April, 2016. Google has managed to capture aerial imagery not just after the event, but during the event. For example, we can see aerial imagery of the slopes of Mt Aso captured on April 15th, and again on April 16th showing that a large number of landslides took place between the images being captured.

before
after

Before and after of multiple landslides on Mt Aso, Japan.

before
after

Before and after of a landslides that swept over some houses.

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after

A bridge and road destroyed by a landslide.

Some of the landslides channelled together to produce a mudslide at the bottom:


Mudslide caused by landslides on Mt Aso, Japan.

One hillside didn’t quite collapse, but looks very unsafe.


Large cracks across a hillside that has only slid a little bit.

The earthquakes started with a foreshock on April 14th, which struck the eastern Kumamoto suburb of Mashiki. Google was very quick to respond, as the aerial imagery is captured the following day, April 15th. The largest shock took place on April 15th, at 16:25 UTC, which is April 16th, 01:25 JST, so, after the first Google aerial image and before the second one.

Looking at Mashiki, we can see what looks like tiles missing in the roofs of buildings. It is difficult to tell just how much damage has been done. A look at this article, however, shows that many houses collapsed vertically with their roofs largely intact and the real damage was severe.


Collapsed houses in Mashiki, Japan.

In the city of Kumamoto, a bullet train was derailed, but apparently it was not carrying passengers and nobody was hurt. The imagery is dated 15th April, so it appears it was derailed by the foreshock.


Derailed bullet train.

Kumamoto Castle appears to have suffered some damage from the foreshock and then more serious damage in the main quake. There are some relatively poor quality satellite images from after the main quake.

To see the above locations and many more in Google Earth download this KML file.