Time To Step Up Earthquake Preparedness Is NOW

On the 10th anniversary of the Gorkha Earthquake, Nepal Verified News had a conversation with Lok Vijay Adhikari, chief of the National Seismological Center, on the status of our quake preparedness. Excerpts:  

Status of preparedness

Worryingly, the level of preparedness is far from adequate now, even after a series of significant quakes since the Nepal-Bihar earthquake of 1990 BS (January 15, 2034) like the April 25, 2015 Gorkha earthquake (according to estimates, the magnitude-7.8 quake epicentered in Barpak of Gorkha district killed around 9000 people, injured thousands of people and caused damage to or destroyed more than six lakh structures in Kathmandu and other parts of the country). 

After the Gorkha quake, quakes that have jolted districts like Bajhang and Jajarkot districts show that the status of our preparedness is very weak.

This is worrying because the whole of Nepal, including the Himalayan region, is at a high risk of major quake events. 

Retro-fitted, many school buildings are safer but the same cannot be said of a majority of other structures.  

Educate, train, build better
 

First and foremost, we have not yet conducted adequate research on the risk of quakes and the structures that can withstand their impact, thereby minimizing the loss of lives and properties.     

Whatever we have learnt, we have learnt (mostly) through lived experiences—of the Gorkha quake, the magnitude-6.3 Jajarkot quake of November 3, 2023, etc.

For instance, after the 2015 quake, people of Kathmandu stopped building taller houses, they began ‘downsizing’ multi-storied houses, they started adopting quake-resistant technologies. 

As time passed, however, people started forgetting the lessons learned.

This means there’s a need to reinforce learning, to impart earthquake education. 

We need a system in place for imparting earthquake education from the school level and conducting regular drills to help people better prepare for the disaster rather than organizing programs on special occasions like the earthquake memorial day. 

Preparing/updating building codes and implementing them after assessing the risk of quakes is equally necessary. Some urban areas of the country are already doing this.  

Haphazardly constructed structures are always unsafe, whether they are ‘modern’ structures or structures built using traditional technologies. Structures built using local raw materials are not necessarily unsafe. What is important is that the construction has to be in line with certain building codes, it has to follow certain systematic ways.

Raising awareness

There’s also a need to raise public awareness on the importance of building structures in line with approved building codes by keeping in mind that it is the man-made structures whose collapse results in loss of lives and properties. In case of existing structures, they can be made safer through retro-fitting and we need to make people aware of such technologies. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Hazard mapping

What will be the extent of losses from a quake of a certain magnitude in certain parts of the country, say in parts of Nepal west of Gorkha, in the light of studies that the region is at a risk of a major quake event? We have no idea.  

Realizing this gap, we need to conduct research on this and step up preparedness accordingly.                                                                     

The road ahead

Western Nepal experienced a magnitude-8.5 quake in the year 1505. According to some estimates, the quake killed one-third of Nepal’s population.

In 1960, a magnitude-9.5 quake struck the coast off Chile, making it the most powerful jolt in recorded history, triggering a tsunami that killed approximately 2,000 people in Chile, 61 people 15 hours later in Hawaii and 122 people 22 hours later in Japan.

The deadliest quake in recorded history occurred in Shaanxi, China in 1556.

The jolt, accompanied by numerous landslides and aftershocks, devastated Xi'an, the big city at the east end of the Silk Road, killing 8.3 lakh people when the world’s population was said to be around 500 million.

Learning lessons from events like these, we need to prepare accordingly.