Earthquake damage to a laboratory animal facility

Our seven-storey laboratory animal facility was damaged during the 1995 earthquake of magnitude 7.2. The seismic intensity experienced at our facility was estimated to be around 5 on the Japanese version of the Richter scale (a very strong shock). However, no damage was sustained to the water, gas or electricity supplies. In many of the offices, the upper drawers of the steel cabinets fell to the floor. In the animal-rooms, while the floor-fixed cage-racks were hardly damaged, most of the movable cage-racks were dislodged by the shocks. We describe here our countermeasures, including those taken prior to the earthquake.