DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Ceremonies are being held in Japan to mark the fifth anniversary of the devastating earthquake that hit the city of Kobe. Relatives gathered on a hilltop above Kobe in the predawn darkness lighting candles for each of the more than 6,000 victims. The terrifying 7.2 magnitude hit at 5:46 a.m. on January 17, 1995. CNN covered the story in-depth, and we take a look back in this edition of CNN 20.</s>LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The death toll in today's massive earthquake in Japan is rising by the hour. The quake was centered near Kobe and Osaka in western Japan some 280 miles from Tokyo.</s>MIKE CHINOY, CNN HONG KONG BUREAU CHIEF: It was 7.2 on the Richter scale. It was a pretty big quake. In Kobe, there were many buildings that were old buildings and that were fragile buildings made of wood that simply collapsed.</s>TOM MINTIER, CNN LONDON BUREAU CHIEF: When I look back at some of the images of Kobe, I always return to that stretch of highway, that span that basically was turned upside down. The image shows you the power of what an earthquake can do. When you think of a structure the size of a highway with the strength that it supposedly had, and was supposedly earthquake-proof, and for the power to have taken all the supports and just collapse them, and toss it down to the ground, it really, really showed you how powerful this earthquake was. I've never seen destruction like I saw in Kobe, and everywhere you turned, it was there, it was in front of you, it was behind you, it was beside you.</s>CHINOY: I think it was a great psychological shock because it brought home to people just how unprepared they were. Japan is a country that has regular, big earthquakes, and what happened in Kobe underscored the fact that when a quake like that strikes, no one is safe.
CNN 20: Japan Earthquake, January 17, 1995