Kobe quake survivor, son die in Pakistan

TOKYO • Satoru Narahara cheated death once when a massive earthquake flattened the Japanese city of Kobe a decade ago, a life-changing experience for the engineer who quit his job to become an aid worker in Pakistan.

It was there his luck ran out.

Mr. Narahara, 36, and his twoyearson, Hikaru, became the only Japanese known to have been among the tens of thousands killed in Saturday’s quake when their 10-storey apartment tower collapsed in the capital, Islamabad.

Mr. Narahara’s wife, Hiromi, 34, who worked as a volunteer nurse in Pakistan before their marriage, suffered a broken leg but was rescued from the rubble.

As relatives of Mr. Narahara gathered in Islamabad to collect his remains and those of the child, the story of how the family came to feel the full wrath of the earthquake unfolded in the Japanese media.

“ After I experienced the [Kobe] disaster, my view of life has changed,” Mr. Narahara told his friends, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. “I want to make the most of my skills in the field.”

He was a freshman engineer specializing in urban garbage disposal at a steelworks belonging to Kobe Steel when a magnitude7.3 quake flattened the port city of Kobe on Jan. 17, 1995, killing about 6,400 people.

His office crumbled and its staff moved to another city. Later, Mr. Narahara quit Kobe Steel.

By April, 2000, he was sent to Pakistan as a volunteer by a governmentJapanese aid organization, the International Cooperation Agency ( JICA).

He helped a satellite city outside Islamabad work out a garbage disposal program and met his wife-to-be there, the daily Yomiuri said.