Nepal Tregady

Blessed with stunning natural scenery, Nepal
is a popular tourist destination that attracts
hundreds of thousands of travelers each year.
But the source of the country's beauty is what
makes it particularly vulnerable to
earthquakes. Much of Nepal's population
lives in a valley beneath the Himalayas, a
mountain range formed by collisions between
the Indian and Central Asian tectonic plates.
These collisions—which occur when the
Indian plate slides underneath its much
larger neighbor—are what cause earthquakes.
According to The Washington Post , a chunk
of the earth measuring 75 by 37 miles shifted
10 feet in 30 seconds on Saturday, destroying
much of what lay atop the surface.
Earthquakes are endemic to Nepal because of
this geology, and major tremors occur
roughly every 70 years. But Nepal's
socioeconomic situation is what made
Saturday's quake so deadly. One of Asia's
poorest countries, Nepal is also one of its
most rapidly urbanizing—the population of
Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, grows by 6.5
percent each year. Many newly urbanized
Nepalis live in hastily built structures that
lack adequate protection from earthquakes,
and much of the city's existing housing stock
was constructed before building codes were
established. The collapse of these homes
drives up casualty numbers. According to the
U.S. Geological Survey, an earthquake of
similar magnitude in California, a developed
region that enforces strict building codes,
would be as much as 100 times less fatal .
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Nepal has adopted some measures to educate
its population about the risk of earthquakes.
But political gridlock has prevented greater
progress. A bill to set up a Disaster Risk
Management Commission is stalled in Nepal's
parliament and, according to the Nepali
journalist Kunda Dixit, emphasizes post-
disaster relief instead of preventive
measures. Building codes are only
intermittently enforced, and developers often
balk at paying extra for earthquake-proof
materials. And in a country plagued by
poverty and political instability, earthquake
preparedness is not always a top priority—
even when the government knows that a
major disaster is imminent.
"They knew they had a problem but it was so
large they didn't [know] where to start, how
to start," Hari Kumar, Southeast Asia regional
coordinator for Geohazards International, a
group that works on worldwide quake risks,
told the AP.
The scope of Saturday's disaster means that
recovery, not prevention, will dominate
Nepal's agenda in the months and years
ahead. But as the country rebuilds, its
mission will be to ensure that the next major
earthquake—whenever it occurs—will be far
less deadly.