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Why Knowing An Earthquake Could Strike Didn’t Help Prevent Disaster In Nepal

A Nepalese man cries as he walks through the earthquake debris in Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunday, April 26, 2015. A strong magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. CREDIT: AP
A Nepalese man cries as he walks through the earthquake debris in Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunday, April 26, 2015. A strong magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal’s capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. CREDIT: AP

Earthquakes are a reality of life in Nepal. But that doesn’t mean that their effects can be contained.

“The entire territory of Nepal lies in high seismic hazard zone,” according to the Kathmandu-based National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET).

While earthquake experts and aid organizations have worked for decades to mitigate the effects of especially severe tremors, a rapidly growing urban population paired with unforgiving mountainous terrain have made it almost impossible to prepare for the sort of calamitous 7.8-magnitude quake that struck Nepal on Saturday. So far, the quake is believed to have killed more than 4,600 people — and that number is expected to rise as rescue efforts continue and aftershocks persist.

“It was sort of a nightmare waiting to happen,” James Jackson, a University of Cambridge-based seismologist told the AP. “Physically and geologically what happened is exactly what we thought would happen.”

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James visited Kathmandu last week along with dozens of other earth and social scientists, in order to figure out how to best prepare the teeming capital city for a particularly severe earthquake. The lead scientist for Earthquakes Without Frontiers, Jackson said that to him, the threat of disaster was visceral.

“The construction is appalling in Kathmandu,” Jackson said, adding that the country’s inheritance laws have only made it worse. Since it’s required that property be split equally among sons, he said, many in the country build up on thin, rickety homes in order to create equal living space for burgeoning families.

In a country where nearly a quarter of all people live below the poverty line, dealing with day-to-day struggles often takes precedence over preparing for future ones.

“If you live in the Kathmandu Valley you have other priorities, daily threats and daily nasty things happen to you in terms of air quality, water quality, pollution, traffic and just poverty,” Jackson said. “But it doesn’t mean that the earthquakes go away.”

A Nepalese family collects belongings from their home destroyed in Saturday’s earthquake, in Bhaktapur on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, April 27, 2015.
A Nepalese family collects belongings from their home destroyed in Saturday’s earthquake, in Bhaktapur on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, April 27, 2015.

Nepalese people are well aware of the threats posed by earthquakes, having seen four major quakes in the last century. A small, but dedicated cadre of seismologists and earth scientists in Nepal have for years raised the alarm of the very real possibility of another earthquake.

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“It’s not a problem of ignorance, it’s a problem of resources,” Susan Hough of the United States Geological Society said. “People are building houses to live in with the resources that they have. They can’t afford rebar and engineering.”

In a chapter on rendering schools in developing countries safe from earthquakes, several staff members from the National Society for Earthquake Technology wrote in the book Earthquake Hazard, Risk, and Disasters that the country’s lax building codes have only increased the destruction that might be caused by an earthquake:

[N]o system exists for controlling the professional standards of engineers/designers through reference to professional qualifications/membership, peer review processes, or by legal means. Further, the owner builders, who follow the advice of local craftsmen and mason leaders, build a significant proportion of the buildings in Nepal. Neither the owner builder nor the crafts persons are aware of the possible disastrous consequences of an imminent earthquake. They do not have adequate access to information related to safer building practices and incorporation of simple earthquake-resisting features at nominal extra costs. Even building construction projects funded by national and multilateral agencies generally do not spell out adequate requirements related to seismic safety in their terms of reference to their consultants.

With rampant corruption in both the private and public sectors, ensuring that buildings meet regulations is doubly difficult.

Amid densely populated cities and sharp mountain terrain, it’s not easy to avert disaster on an individual basis.

Nearly 11,000 people died after 8.1-magnitude earthquake struck the Kathmandu Valley in 1934 and 40 percent of all buildings in the Kathmandu Valley were damaged. A quarter of all homes in Kathmandu were totally destroyed.

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More than 80 years later, it’s feared that a slightly less intense quake will take an exponentially bigger toll given rising population rates and congestion in the area.

According to a 1998 report by the California-based nonprofit organization GeoHazards International and NSET, “Simply applying the percentage of the population killed or injured in the 1934 earthquake to the population of the Valley today results in an estimate of 22,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries requiring hospitalization. Applying more recent earthquake casualty figures from cities comparable to the Kathmandu Valley results in an estimate of 40,000 deaths and 95,000 injuries in the Kathmandu Valley’s next major earthquake.”

The report further predicted that 95 percent of all water pipes, 60 percent of phone lines, and 40 percent of electric lines would be damaged.

While it’s too soon to provide a complete picture of the damage, the concerns that preceded this weekend’s earthquake seem to have become reality.

“Communication is currently very difficult,” Cecilia Keizer, the Nepal country director for Oxfam said in a statement. “Telephone lines are down and the electricity has been cut off making charging mobile phones difficult. The water is also cut off. The number of people killed is continuing to rise. Many of the old houses have been destroyed and at least one large apartment block has come down in Kathmandu.”

Since more remote areas have been left inaccessible by infrastructure damage, the death count has come mainly from Kathmandu, although aid workers have said that mountain villages have seen some of the worst damage.