Tamihiro Nakamichi* and Motomu Inoue**

* Director of Nishi Clean Center, Public Cleansing Division, Environmental Bureau, City of Kobe
** Managing Director Kobe Environmental Research Institute

+ Correspondence should be addressed to Tamihiro Nakamichi:
(Ibuki, Ikawadanicho, Nishi-ku, Kobe 651-21 Japan)

Abstract

Seven months have passed since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake hit my city of Kobe on January 17. The focus of our disaster waste management project is shifting from the process of demolition of crushed housings and buildings to that of debris disposal. The demolition-removal process is important because it affects the efficiency of the following disposal process. A few local governments which carefully sorted the debris found that the following disposal management was less difficult, but most government did not have enough abilities to sort the debris.

The method for debris transportation should be improved. Many trucks loaded too much debris, and often caused traffic jams or accidents. They also dropped some debris on the roads, and scattered waste particles in the air.

As for waste treatment at temporary storage sites and medial disposal bases, it is most important to carefully choose and use heavy construction machines, such as the back-hoe. In order to sort out the combustible wood chips from incombustible debris, many local governments have applied a crush-separation method or a buoyancy selecting method using a water pool.

Key words: disaster waste, demolition-removal, transportation, heavy construction machine, crush-separation