Like most Nepalis, whether at home, work, public place or on the road, one does not have the faintest clue as to what one will do in the panic that will follow within a millionth of a second should an earthquake trigger. Forget what we should do.
That said, the magnitude of the panic will far outmatch the earthquake which will hit the cramped capital unannounced.[break]
And experts warn that the clock is ticking for a major earthquake to hit right under where our feet, as of now, rest.
A study by the Home Ministry and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) back in 2002 says that “a worst case scenario earthquake would not allow Kathmandu to continue to function as the capital of Nepal.”
Period.
In the back of our minds, we have all, now and then had vague thoughts on ‘What will be?’ and have mulled over the frequent wake-up calls and the catastrophic consequences in store for us. But if so, what prevents us from being prepared for an earthquake, dubbed the decade’s deadliest killer or put in the simplest of words, an inevitable catastrophe?
Amrit Man Tuladhar, head of Nepal government’s earthquake preparedness program, says, “Nepalis are least prepared should an earthquake hit us.”
“And it isn’t a matter of whether an earthquake will trigger or not. It will, definitely, but the irony is only 10 percent of the people are aware of it.”
“The situation is actually very scary,” he told The Week at his earthquake-resistant office at Baber Mahal.
Exactly the point! But what are Tuladhar and his team or we, the valley denizens, doing about it?
If a powerful earthquake strikes Kathmandu at this very moment, the disaster could be worse than the recent disasters we saw in Haiti or Chile, fears Tuladhar, one of the key personnel who drafted the National Building Codes.
The building codes were introduced in 2003 to ensure internationally accepted standards for earthquake resistant models in construction.
But Tuladhar deplores, “Implementing it in a country like Nepal is a different thing altogether. The rules and regulations are still largely ignored.”
“This is a major concern in itself,” Tuladhar and his team believes, “More than 80 percent of old buildings will collapse. If one were to be in Ason while a quake struck, tell me what can one possibly do?”
“It is known that a majority of buildings in Kathmandu Valley are masonry and they are poorly built. Further, even the so called “pillar system buildings” built in the past several decades, are poorly built because estimated about 90 percent of them are non-engineered.
Several engineered buildings are found not to be complying fully with the National Building Codes,” earthquake expert Amod Mani Dixit says.
An old hand in seismic studies, Dixit is the executive director of National Society for Earthquake Technology – Nepal (NSET) and has been actively engaged in natural hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction since 1978, focusing largely on earthquakes.
DISASTER-PRONE CAPITAL
The risks of an earthquake disaster has escalated in recent times due to declining construction practices, uncontrolled urban development and rapidly increasing population with little or no awareness of risks.
“Nearly 6,000 houses are built every year in the Valley, and mostly without implementing the codes and I am sorry to say that I cannot give you a count of the total number of houses in the valley,” said Tuladhar.
As such, a large scale earthquake could pancake Kathmandu, killing 40,000 people, injuring 100,000 and destroying 60 percent of infrastructure, leaving 900,000 homeless, according to NSET. But Dixit pointed out that these figures are the results of an empirical study in 1997.
“The current figure for potential casualty for a MMI IX intensity of shaking could be as large as 100,000 dead, more than 200,000 injured, although NSET or any other organization has not conducted revised estimates of the potential damage,” said Dixit.
MMI IX means “Poorly built masonry structures collapse; all structures are damaged and underground pipes broken.”
“If we only calculate 10 percent of the valley’s population to be killed, it is already above 400,000 and these are just figures, mind you. The aftermath could be beyond our comprehension,” warned Tuladhar.
If these expert warnings and 1997 figures are to even jolt us for a while, the western region of Nepal show seismic activity that is evident of a major shock in the near future. And when it does, it will be catastrophic to say the least, surpassing the estimated figures by a huge mile.
Nepal has not suffered a major quake for decades, hazards and risks and expert David Petley believes the troubled country is woefully unprepared.
“There has not been a quake on that (west) section of fault for hundreds of years. The larger the time gap (between quakes) the larger the quake is going to be,” Petley said in a recent interview to AFP.
“From a geological perspective the risk seems to be very large indeed,” the Wilson professor of Britain’s Durham University added.
Belgium-based Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) said in their report that earthquakes have killed more people in the last 10 years than any other natural disaster. The report was released few weeks after the Haiti quake where more than 212,000 people were killed in a 7.3 Richter earthquake on January 12, 2010.
“Earthquakes claim more lives than other natural hazards such as flooding or droughts, where people have time to take precautions,” Tuladhar said.
THE SHOCK AFTER THE SHOCK
Aside from poorly constructed buildings, a major source of earthquake disaster in Kathmandu, calculated in terms of potential death, comes from the lack of emergency medical response to the injured (about 10 percent), according to Dixit.
“Only few hospitals have emergency response plans and conduct periodic drills. Only initial steps have been taken to make earthquake drills mandatory for each and every school of the country.”
A 2001 GeoHazards International study also said Kathmandu would suffer the worst losses and for a note, its figures are a decade old and experts like Tuladhar fear an earthquake could create a severe humanitarian crisis in a poor country like Nepal, where basic services like food resources and drinking water supply and other public infrastructure are not up to the mark even in normal times.
Kathmandu has just one single-runway airport and the only three roads into the city are likely to be destroyed in a major quake. Organizing aid and operating immediate rescue missions with just eight working fire engines also paint a dreadful picture.
“It will take 72 hours for the UN to organize large scale assistance. The priority will be search and rescue missions with the help of local response system,” UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Robert Piper told The Week.
And since the only airstrip is also connected to the capital city with bridges, we anticipate that they will break down due to earthquake and aid will have to be airlifted and unlike Haiti, Nepal does not have a port, he said.
“What has been made clear in Haiti is that when a quake affects the capital and government infrastructure is destroyed, organizing help becomes very difficult indeed,” said Petley.
But Nepal Police Spokesperson DIG Bigyan Raj Sharma sounds confident although the police have not had any drills so far.
“We haven’t had any drills so far. Our officials are currently undergoing earthquake preparedness training at the National Police Academy and we hope to do a nationwide drill soon,” he said.
“There will be wide scale panic. We will immediately setup a command control room to deal with such emergency situation nationwide. We have a pool of officials trained locally and internationally and are soon launching regional and district level training.”
The Nepal Army (NA) is also preparing itself to take necessary measures. NA Spokesman Brigadier General Ramindra Chhetri said rescue operations largely depend on situation.
“The system and mechanism are there. So the speed at which NA can react depends on the work force available and the possibility to maneuver the available resources at that particular time,” Chettri said.
“At the ground level, preliminary rescue operations would start as per the capacity of the deployed unit as rescue and relief operations during any disaster as it is a constitutionally (by the Interim Constitution) mandated task of the NA. Other coordinated tasks under the Ministry of Home Affairs will be as per the decision in the emergency meeting called soon after a major natural disaster occurs.”
SEISMIC MOVEMENT RELATIVITY
Kathmandu is located along the Alpine-Himalayan belt and therefore, many destructive earthquakes have occurred in this region. Seismic records indicate that there were earthquakes in the region in 1810, 1833 and 1866.
The 1934 Bihar earthquake measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale was one of the largest earthquakes which killed 8,500 people and destroyed a quarter of all homes and historical sites, according to NSET and GeoHazards International.
“There are several sources within 100 km of Kathmandu Valley capable of generating large earthquakes of up to magnitude 8 but that can generate the intensity of shaking equivalent to level IX or even X in the modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale.”
MMI IX level shaking is huge – similar to what happened in Haiti or in Chile recently.
And warnings are mounting that another big earthquake is “inevitable” in the Kathmandu Valley.
Friday morning tremor on February 26 has already left experts concerned as an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale hit eastern and central Nepal.
“Though the epicenter of the tremor was northern Tibet, the risks are not negligible as cases of tremors measuring 6 Richter or above are not common,” said Tuladhar.
Earlier in 1988, an earthquake measuring 6.1 Richter scale with Udaypur district as the epicenter had killed 721 people, injured 6,453 and destroyed 22,328 homes.
Kathmandu lies on the site of a prehistoric lake filled with soft sediments, and this affects the level of damage caused by an earthquake, according to NSET.
“The horrible fact is that we Nepalis, from an individual to the government, are contributing to increasing vulnerabilities by simply ignoring the earthquake risk and its genesis, and by not initiating the risk reduction measures including institutionalization of policy and legislation, capacity building and knowledge management and so on,” vents Dixit.
“We are yet to start an organized approach. Institutionalization of the risk reduction measure is what is required and that is exactly what is not only lacking but totally ignored.”
Meanwhile, the UN is working closely with the government to take mitigation measures should an earthquake trigger. Contingency plans to cater basic food, water and medical supplies have been developed and camp areas have been identified which will be equipped with earthquake resistant water supply. Simulations for large scale earthquakes have also been done.
But the fund that has been set aside for earthquake preparedness is in short, far too little, Piper said. The entire donor fund combined, it is well less than $10 million. And that is clearly not enough considering the amount of work that needs to be done to ensure an earthquake resistant Nepal.
Margareta Washlstrom, the special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, noted: “Disaster risk reduction is an indispensable investment for each earthquake-prone city and each community,” in the CRED press statement.
But aid, according to experts, seems not to be the problem.
“All the attention has been given to aid but not much attention has been given to mitigating measures,” Piper pointed out, referring to his recent statement at the 12th Earthquake Safety Day 2010, when he stressed that violators of the Building Codes should be brought to justice.
“It is the buildings that kill people, not the earthquake,” he said. Ironically, people are vehemently building risks upon risks, day by day.
And we don’t even know about it.
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