The Niigata earthquake on June 16th, 1964, had a magnitude of 7.5, and a seismic scale of 6. The earthquake caused an urban bridge to fall down, apartment buildings constructed with steel reinforced concrete to be overturned, and fires to break out in petroleum tanks. These incidents caused a different type of damage compared with past incidents, and they attracted notice as new types of urbane disasters. The Niigata earthquake was also the first seismic disaster in Japan where the liquefaction of the ground attracted notice. Among the disaster incidents caused by the earthquake, five crude oil storage tanks in a refinery caught fire and continued burning for two weeks, spreading into the surrounding area and burning down a total of 286 adjacent houses. One of them was a 30,000 kL floating roof type tank, 51,500 mm in diameter, and 14,555 mm in height, which was fully stocked with oil. The cause of the fire was ignition by sparks generated by the collision of the floating roof with the side wall, which in turn was caused by the movement of the crude oil by the sloshing phenomenon. The fire also spread to two spherical tanks for LPG made of 70 kg per square mm(700 MPa) class high tensile steel, 1,200 cubic m involume, 13,240 mm in inner diameter, and 25mm in thickness, resulted in the splitting and buckling of a supporting leg. Furthermore, all of the equipment in the refinery, including horizontal set tanks and freight tanks, were damaged. The Niigata earthquake was also one of the most serious seismic disasters to affect chemical plants, and it brought about many precepts such as the increased perception of the liquefaction phenomena of the sandy ground, the importance of investigations into earthquake-proof designs for tanks, and the importance of the application of fire-proof concrete coating to supporting structures.