Wake up

Over the years, the trend of rapid urbanization and haphazard development activities in the core historical areas and in peripheral agricultural lands of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Patan have increased the earthquake vulnerability of the Valley, thereby leaving a huge number of people under high danger if the country is to get a quake jolt. Seismologists have predicted that in case a disaster of the same magnitude as that of the great earthquake of 1934 (which registered 8.4 on the Richter Scale) was to hit the Valley, thousands of people will die while there will be a lot more casualties. In the wake of the earthquake of 1934, when the Valley was a lot less populated and settlements were sparse, over 16 thousand people lost their lives while more than 300,000 houses were destroyed, rendering thousands of people homeless. Nepal is already in the list of top 10 countries that are most vulnerable to earthquake in the near future.



On Earthquake Safety Day, Jan 16, which coincides with the 76th anniversary of 1934 earthquake day, the decision-makers must review and evaluate the policies and measures put in place by the state in the field of disaster preparedness, awareness generation and disaster mitigation. Although Nepal has designed a building code to make the new structures earthquake resistant, the fact is that not enough has been done. With every modernization and development plan, the government must ensure an effective implementation of this much-needed building code for the safety and security of the Valley residents. Moreover, the state must invest in increasing the capacity of emergency services to cope with disaster. The focus must also be in community preparedness, conducting earthquake drills and formulating proper legislation on mitigation. A disaster management institution would do well to back the government’s mitigation technique, emergency response plan, post-reconstruction program and educating and training both the developers and the locals.



If nothing is done or taken seriously, it might be just too late to save precious human lives as has been demonstrated by the Haitian earthquake (measuring 7 on the Richter Scale) of Jan 13, which has already claimed over 50,000 lives. The damage caused to the structures, buildings and properties of the people was simply immense. Besides the fury of nature, much damage was caused as structures were not made quake resistant and preparedness level was said to be low. One can only hope and pray that the Haitian experience is not repeated here. But if it does, one can only imagine the magnitude of the damage and expected casualties. The authorities concerned must wake up to this reality now.

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