January 26, 1995: Vol26n14: Quake memories vivd; UB law student works to aid Kobe victims

By CHRISTINE VIDAL
Reporter Editor
The noise was really loud. It was like a train next to your head going
faster and faster and faster. I thought it was the end of the world
and that it must be happening to the whole world."
	Lisa Dalfonso is home now, but the memories of the Jan. 17
earthquake that devastated Kobe, Japan, are vivid. The 25-year-old UB
student is trying to put the disaster behind her, but her thoughts
keep turning to the people she left half a world away.
	A J.D./Ph.D. student just one credit hour shy of graduating
from law school, Dalfonso arrived in Kobe Jan. 12 as part of a
delegation of students who planned to study Japanese language and
culture at Konan University. She returned to Buffalo Friday night,
tired and shaken, but safe.
	Now she is spearheading a relief effort to aid residents of
Kobe. "I feel really guilty that I had a nice warm place to go home
to, I have a shower and food," she said in announcing the Kobe
Disaster Relief Fund, being conducted through M&T Bank. Deposits to
the fund (account #014266977) may be made at any M&T branch, either in
person or through the mail.
	"It's very important that my community do something for them
because their community did so much for me," Dalfonso said.
	The magnitude of the devastation is almost impossible to
imagine, said Dalfonso, who described her experiences at a press
conference at the Center for Tomorrow Saturday afternoon, hours after
her return.
	"It's horrible; you have no idea," she said. 
	Awake early because of the effects of jet lag and trying to
get warm because the heat in Kobe is turned off every night, Dalfonso
said she realized immediately what was happening. "The motion was so
violent that I couldn't get up," she said. "I was sure I would never
leave that house alive."
	As part of her exchange program, she was living with a
Japanese family, whose home, while damaged, withstood the earthquake.
When the shaking stopped, she crawled over toppled furniture and began
screaming as she ran to the top of the stairs. Her Japanese father --
she said she considers the Takabatake family with whom she was staying
her extended family -- was bleeding from facial cuts he received when
furniture fell on him, but was not seriously injured.
	"Mrs. Takabatake was screaming that she couldn't get up, that
she was trapped by furniture," Dalfonso said. "It took us three
minutes to break down the door and get her out."
	Their attempts to leave the house were frustrated by
aftershocks and debris. "I was afraid to be in the house," Dalfonso
said, but conditions outside were no improvement. The second floor of
the house next door had fallen into the Takabatakes' front yard, and
they were unable to leave until a downed tree was removed.
	Other houses were just piles of wood, and two families that
lived in the same courtyard of houses were buried alive. As they began
to survey the damage, Dalfonso said, "it all started to sink in -- we
had lived and that was what was important."
	Takabatake, an executive at Kobe Steel, had a cellular phone
that Dalfonso used to call and reassure her family.
	Kobe, a city of roughly 1.2 million residents, Dalfonso said,
was unprepared for an earthquake of such intensity, which she
estimated destroyed 75 percent of the area. Rescue efforts were
largely up to individual residents. "I kept saying 'When are the
police coming?'...Ambulances didn't come because there weren't
enough," Dalfonso said.
	"The first two days you were on your own. If your neighbor's
house was collapsed, it was up to you to dig them out." Normally not a
demonstrative society, she said, "to see the community immediately
respond to each other was really amazing."
	February is Japan's coldest month, when temperatures hover in
the 40s. "It's cold. People are living in buildings that still don't
have any heat. They don't have any water. Families with babies are
living in tents or sleeping in blankets in the parks, trying to find
enough food for the children."
	She and her Japanese family spent the first two days after the
earthquake trying to help people dig out and find food and water. They
spent the first night in their car, which was damaged, but driveable.
The second night they drove north of the quake zone to a friend's
house.
	On Thursday, the Takabatakes' son drove Dalfonso to the
airport in Osaka, normally a 35-minute trip that took them 4 1/2 hours
to complete. From there she flew to Tokyo, where she exchanged her
return ticket and flew home.
	"To me the numbers explain (how severe the earthquake was).
The worst thing was watching the sheets coming out of the buildings
and knowing what it meant," she said.
	"I'm not planning on going back immediately because at this
point I'm too scared," Dalfonso said.
	A second UB student who was in Kobe at the time of the
earthquake is staying with her grandmother in Yokohama, and probably
will return home in a couple of weeks, according to Joseph Williams,
director of UB's International Student and Scholar Services.
	Sakura Moriya, a 21-year-old Japanese-American from Long
Island, is "thinking about a period of decompression," says Arthur
Neisberg, UB's study abroad coordinator, who spoke with her last week.
"Sakura said on the way out it was like a movie set from Hollywood. It
took a day for it to sink in."