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Tue Jun 19 08:03:11 2007

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YOU ARE HERE: Homepage > Newsdesk > Article

NEPAL: Densely-populated Kathmandu said facing increased
earthquake risk

19 Jun 2007 08:00:28
GMT

Source: IRIN

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article
or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's
alone.

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KATHMANDU, 19 June 2007 (IRIN) - Despite being located in one of the world's
most seismically active zones, Kathmandu's earthquake preparedness is low and
the lives of tens of thousands of residents are at risk, according to local
experts.

"The next earthquake will be very disastrous if we fail to improve our
preparedness," said expert Amod Dixit from the Nepal National Society for
Earthquake Technology (NSET).

NSET is a local civic group which has been playing a key role in lobbying
at both national and international level to promote awareness of earthquake risk
and implement seismic risk reduction projects in Nepal.

Kathmandu is among 21 cities around the world in seismic zones and the
risk for the city is increasing every year, say experts. This is mainly due to
declining construction practices, uncontrolled urban development and a rapidly
increasing population, which is now nearly two million people.

Kathmandu's urban growth rate is nearly 6.5 percent every year, with one
of the highest densities in the world. Nearly 6,000 concrete houses are built
every year, and mostly without proper engineering and seismic force
considerations, according to NSET.

Awareness programme "essential"

"A massive awareness programme has become essential to convert Nepal into
a totally earthquake-safe community by 2020," said Ramesh Guragain, an engineer
involved in building earthquake-resistant buildings.

Although some awareness raising work is under way, due to cooperation
between various Nepalese agencies working on earthquake safety, more needs to be
done, he said.

Nepal is no stranger to earthquakes and major ones have occurred several
times in the last few hundred years in Kathmandu, as evident from historical
records.

According to the government's Earthquake Division at the Department of
Mines and Geology, the last big earthquake took place in 1934 when nearly 17,000
people died in a minute. The government reported that the quake's magnitude was
eight degrees on the Richter scale.

The earthquake destroyed nearly one quarter of all homes and many
historic temples.

If an earthquake of that magnitude were to happen within a decade, it
would cause significantly greater human casualties, physical damage and economic
loss than past earthquakes, according to NSET's Kathmandu Valley Earthquake Risk
Management Project.

Potential humanitarian disaster

Experts are worried that such an earthquake could create a severe
humanitarian crisis - especially in a poor country like Nepal, where there are
still not enough hospitals, doctors and food resources, and where the
infrastructure and water supply situation is not up to coping with the
consequences of a large-scale disaster.

According to NSET, inadequate preparedness could result in the deaths of
nearly 40,000 people in the capital, leave over 900,000 homeless and destroy 60
percent of the infrastructure.

"Kathmandu needs to speed up the process of managing earthquake risk to
ensure its survival and protect its residents," said Dixit, who added that many
of these activities can be carried out even with limited resources.

Kathmandu lies on the site of a prehistoric lake filled with the soft
sediments, and this could affect the level of damage caused by an earthquake,
according to NSET.

nn/at/cb

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