A roaring, oil-fed fire exploded its way through the mammoth Showa Refinery in Niigata, Japan, claiming 250 homes by the end of the day June 18th, 1964. The fire started when a earthquake [later reported to be 7.5 on the Richter scale] hit the Japanese west coast June 16th, with its epicenter some 50 miles outside of Niigata. While the loss of life in the port city was relatively small (36 dead), 3,534 houses destroyed and a further 11,000 damaged, most of them due to the liquefaction of the soil underneath them, toppling over and sinking entire appartment buildings as the ground underneath became a liquified mass.