Nepal: Sins of Omission

Media outlets around the world have been reporting extensively on the tragic aftermath of Nepal’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake that jolted the nation a month ago. Little has been said about what preceded the natural disaster, yet that can offer clues to the human role in the tragedy.

Earthquakes are hard to predict, but the release of energy in the Earth’s crust in well-known fault zones follows a pattern. Based on that pattern, Nepal’s government had been warned that a “big one” was overdue.

“Many believe Nepal is overdue for the ‘big one,’” noted the Nepal Disaster Management Reference Handbook, prepared by the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance in 2012.

Nepal’s National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET) had studied data since 1255 and found that the Indus-Yarlung suture zone on which Nepal sits has a likelihood of an 8-magnitude earthquake roughly every 75 years. The last quake of that magnitude occurred about 81 years ago in 1934, and so the latest April 25 quake was indeed overdue.

Nepal Disaster Report 2013, released in February 214 by the Ministry of Home Affairs, acknowledged, “Kathmandu is the most at-risk city in the world to a major earthquake… [And] Nepal has been ranked as the 11th most-at-risk country in the world to earthquakes.”

NSET officials estimated that if a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Kathmandu, around 200,000 people would be killed and another 200,000 would be severely injured. Additionally, 1.5 million would be left homeless and 60 percent of houses would be destroyed.

In 2008, the Nepalese Red Cross Society prepared a contingency plan for a major earthquake in Kathmandu, envisaging an 8.3-magnitude earthquakes and thereby ensuring a rapid, appropriate, and effective response. It predicted 22,000 deaths, 60 percent of buildings destroyed, and about 900,000 left homeless.

The quake in April had a magnitude of 7.8 but fortunately its epicenter was about 40 miles east of Kathmandu.

According to the Nepalese government, 500,717 houses were destroyed and 269,190 were partially damaged by the April 25 earthquake and aftershocks, one of which had the magnitude of 7.3. This destruction caused 8,669 fatalities, more than half of them women.

The government knew what to expect from the poorly constructed buildings.

Noting that the government didn’t get around to approving the National Building Code of 1994 until 2000, the interior ministry’s report admitted that the country had an increased vulnerability to earthquakes “largely due to poor building construction practices, including infrastructure that is constructed undermining seismic resilience.”

Only three out of 58 municipalities in Nepal have tried to incorporate the code into their building permit process, according to a report, “Implementation of Nepal National Building Code,” written by PreventionWeb in September 2013. “But [even] these attempts have been too limited and lack the necessary verification to ensure compliance,” it added.

“Compounding the problem is rapid population growth and urbanization in recent years,” stated the 2012 disaster management handbook. “Urbanization without much thought to earthquake-resistant building methods leads to increased vulnerability.”

Given that they were well informed about the high possibility of an earthquake and its aftermath, what had successive governments done about it?

Lack of Preparedness

The interior ministry blamed the lack of preparedness on the nation’s transition. “The challenge is to implement these measures [concerning construction of buildings] in a period of the country’s political transition and move to a new system implementation with full community participation,” its 2013 report said.

The ministry was right, but its analysis declined to identify a reason for the prolonged transition.

The clock on Nepal’s readiness for an impending disaster started ticking in 2006, 75 years after the previous earthquake of 1934.

Certainly, 2006 was politically significant for Nepal. That was the year its 240-year-old Hindu monarchy was abolished after a decade-long civil war led by Maoists.

The democratic space that emerged brought political conflict over the nation’s democratic structure, and numerous distractions generated by the pursuit of narrow personal and political gains. Disagreements over the provisions of a new constitution dominated parliamentary sessions and preoccupied parliamentarians. Lawmakers missed deadline after deadline, with little sign of a consensus.

“The delays [in promulgating a new constitution] have had an impact on the socio-economic situation of ordinary Nepalese and on the legislative and governance process,” the handbook noted, adding that the drafting of new disaster management legislation, as well as new policies and plans, had also been delayed.

It’s not about one political party – the whole political class shares the blame for overlooking warnings about the looming natural disaster.

Despite this, much has been achieved in providing relief to the more than 8 million people affected by the April 25 disaster, partly thanks to the international community, which had in fact been working with the government of Nepal for many years.

The United Nations, along with the Red Cross, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank, have invested $130 million in a project to improve the key infrastructure needed for disaster management in Nepal. Foreign governments, including the United States, have also made large sums available to help in the area of disaster resilience.

As for the Nepalese authorities, they now finally appear to be serious, working around the clock on relief and recovery from the first major natural disaster in democratic Nepal. But to fully atone for their previous omissions, they will need to make disaster risk reduction a long-term priority.