“A major part of Nepal’s vulnerability to earthquake disaster lies in poor infrastructure governance.”
Several years ago, I went on an “Earthquake Walk” in downtown Kathmandu, a walk designed to raise awareness about the city’s vulnerability to a major earthquake. As we ducked into a traditional courtyard, winding our way through a low narrow corridor before emerging into an open square surrounded by high traditional homes, we saw a big stick propping one edge of a building up against another. I’ve thought a lot about that stick today—its inadequacy, its fragility—as news of Nepal’s quake poured in.
Nepal has been waiting for the quake of April 25, 2015 for some years, conscious that it was “overdue” for another. The U.S. Geological Survey has called Nepal “one of the most seismically hazardous regions on Earth.” It sits at the intersection of two tectonic plates, the India and Eurasia, colliding together quickly in geological terms—forty to fifty millimeters each year. That pressure eventually gets released as earthquakes.
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