A concrete Highway, 18 inches thick, was cascaded and split open as much as five feet by the earthquake that hit silk manufacturing city of Fukui. The especially destructive force of the localized quake was attributed to the fact that the quake was "vertical" rather than "horizontal," like the quake that levelled Tokyo in 1923. The earthquake occured in July, 1948 in Fukui, Japan.

Credit: Donated by Corbis-Bettmann