Japan is located in one of the most active seismic zones of the world. It has seen great disastrous earthquakes before. An earthquake hit Kobe city and adjacent areas of Japan on January 17, 1995 at 5-48 AM which was quite different from other earthquakes. The damage caused by this earthquake surprised both the public as well as the engineering community the world over. The views of experts/public who visited Kobe are quite different from the views of people who collected information from newspapers and television. This paper is intended to give information collected by authors during their visit to Kobe and from other reliable sources. This small presentation by the authors on Kobe earthquake may not give complete information about the disaster but endeavours to giva an overview of the event. The authors hope that the information given will stimulate the Engineering community to think of improvements to prevent damage due to earthquaкеs.