10 years after Nepal's worst earthquake in decades, Himalayan region still unequipped for such disasters
analysis Asia
The recent Myanmar earthquake serves as a reminder of the risks faced by the region, as it marks 10 years since a massive quake in Nepal killed about 9,000 people, experts say.
BANGKOK: As glass windows in his room south of Kathmandu rattled violently, Shiba Subedi sprung into action.
He rushed outside, struggling to stand due to the intensity of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that was shaking the foundations of Nepal in the most earthquake-prone region on Earth.
'Everyone around me was visibly frightened, struggling to maintain their balance. I watched as trees swayed and nearby buildings trembled,' he told CNA in March, nearly a decade on from the country's biggest earthquake since 1934.
At the epicentre of the Gorkha Earthquake on Apr 25, 2015, close to the mountain town of Barpak, rural communities lay in ruin.
The spirit of the eponymous Gurkhas - a people known for their resilience and loyalty whose identity is tied to the extremities of the mountainous terrain of their home - was truly tested.
Further away, in the Kathmandu Valley, ancient walls toppled into dust. Tents were erected in a large field in the centre of the capital, a temporary safe zone for the displaced.
Hospitals became overwhelmed. In the end, nearly 9,000 people died and more than 20,000 were injured.
Three and half million people were left homeless and the damage to Nepal's economy was staggering - approximately US$10 billion or almost half its nominal gross domestic product at the time. The country had not been ready. Antiquity sites in Kathmandu were damaged in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. (Photo: CNA/Jack Board)
In the aftermath of the 2015 quake, Subedi was shocked but inspired.
Following the event, he said he chose to pursue his own career in seismology, and today he is one of only a handful of trained seismologists in Nepal, now at the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology.
He is also the chairman of Seismology at School in Nepal, an educational and scientific initiative designed to increase earthquake awareness and preparedness in local schools.
Since then, further natural disasters in the region have fuelled his and other experts' concern over preparedness in the broader Himalayan area.
Last month, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake close to the Myanmar city of Mandalay was another warning to a region about the perils of inaction in the face of persistent danger from more major earthquakes.
At the same time Subedi was rushing out of his house a decade ago, in Kathmandu, one of Nepal's leading earthquake scientists was also contending with what was unfolding.
While resting on his sofa, Lok Bijaya Adhikari, a senior divisional seismologist at the National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center admitted to some initial conflicting thoughts about the first tremors he felt.
'At first I was enjoying it. I thought, okay, it's good. At last, we have an earthquake and people can think about it; the government, the private sector. It will, at least, give them a shock to help them realise that we are under threat. And that a large earthquake may happen anytime,' he said.
What soon became apparent was that the large earthquake had already arrived and within a few seconds his thoughts turned to pure survival.
'It was difficult to stand. I was calling out to my family members and nobody was responding ... At some point, I thought, okay, so this is the last moment of my life,' he said.
While he and his family were safe, across the country, many others were not so fortunate.
Despite the somewhat fresh memory of the disaster, both he and Subedi, who Adhikari collaborates closely with, say the country - and the broader Himalayan region - remains woefully underprepared for another major seismic event.
Calamity has quickly morphed into complacency once again.
'We are not well prepared for the next big earthquake. Since 2015, I would say that we have not done too much,' Subedi said.
'The risk is there. We are sitting just above the part where there could be a magnitude 8 earthquake anytime in Nepal.'
Seismically, the region is a hotbed.
The Himalayas, a young and violent mountain range, have been forged through powerful ruptures caused by underground collisions; continental land masses pushing against one another over time and causing mountains to reach towards the heavens.
The Main Himalayan Thrust is a major geological fault between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates that causes much of the subterranean turbulence. It is complex and dangerous.
In the 10 years since the 2015 Gorkha quake, Subedi has calculated that more than 50,000 earthquakes have occurred in and around Nepal.
What worries experts is when the next big one will arrive - given the long timescales that they work with ranging from 10,000 years to a million years - as they add that the timing cannot be predicted but it also cannot be prevented.
'Nobody can stop it. That is how the entire mountain belt is forming. It is still active. And as far as we understand now, it is coming,' said Paramesh Banerjee, the former president of the Asian Seismological Commission.
'It is difficult to say whether it will be within the next minute or next 50 years or so, because time scale uncertainty is high. But it's time to get prepared,' he said. The Himalayas is a highly tectonically-active region. (Photo: CNA/Jack Board)
In March, the Japanese government released a report laying out the potential devastation of a mega earthquake between magnitude 8 and 9 erupting along its highly active Nankai Trough, off the country's southwest Pacific coast.
It made for alarming reading - close to 300,000 deaths, more than 1.2 million evacuees and US$1.81 trillion in economic losses.
No such formal estimations exist for Nepal or for its neighbours on a large scale. But for experts, the outcomes of such an event in the Himalayan region would be as destructive as in Japan, if not far worse.
In terms of likely locations for a likely future major seismic event, based on analysis of tectonics and the time that has passed since mega quakes of the past, the western and eastern edges of Nepal appear most at risk in future.
The last mega earthquake to impact Nepal's west was more than 500 years ago.
But even small earthquakes are proving to be deadly and damaging in this region when they are not elsewhere in the world, where better infrastructure and citizen preparedness is in place.
Even a 5.6 magnitude event in western Nepal in late 2023 caused more than 150 deaths when it struck at night.
A magnitude 8.0 earthquake is 2.5 times more powerful than a 7.8 quake, like the one that struck the Gorkha region. An 8.5 quake would be 22 times more powerful. Anything to that scale would be 'out of our imagination' in terms of damage, Subedi said.
Such an event has not occurred since 1952, when a magnitude 8 aftershock followed the 8.7 earthquake of Assam in 1950.
'We can expect the estimated death toll could be a couple hundred thousand people. That's why it is very serious,' he said.
'The number of earthquakes is increasing. And the consequences of the earthquakes are also increasing,' he added, mainly due to population density.
A research report published in 2023, authored by Harsh Gupta, a fellow of the International Science Council and president of the Geological Society of India, aimed to simulate the damage that would be caused by a repeat event of a similarly strong quake in a modern context in northern India.
If the earthquake happened in the middle of the night, he found that 950,000 lives could be lost in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.
He said he thought his calculations, done through assessing past earthquakes as well as the typology of buildings and population density, were initially incorrect.
'We kept on recalculating it. But the lives lost today would be immense because the structures in this part of the world are not at all resistant and it's usually the houses that kill people sleeping inside,' he said.
'It's a very alarming picture.'
It can be 'delicate' to provide warnings about future earthquake risk, however, said Marianne Karplus, an associate professor of earth, environmental and resource sciences at the University of Texas. She has done extensive research in the Himalayas.
She said it can cause panic among communities or scepticism if years pass without serious seismic activity. Information can also be difficult to accurately obtain and assess in remote regions, which are vast in countries like Nepal.
They should not be reasons to ignore the science, which shows the 'very high risk of another large earthquake, even in the next 50 years', she said.
'So it's essential that communities prepare. It's going to happen. It's a matter of when and not if,' she said. People drive past a collapsed building on Mar 30, 2025 in the aftermath of a strong earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar. (Photo: REUTERS/Stringer)
György Hetényi, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Lausanne who also regularly conducts research in Nepal, elaborated on how the long timescales that experts work with can make it hard to place into context for decision-makers or regular citizens.
'These events have happened in the past all the time, and they will happen in the future all the time. The problem is, how much time are we speaking about?
'We work with timescales which are sometimes super, super long compared to what you or your neighbour or your family considers as a timescale,' he said.
'Like 10,000 years, 100,000 years, a million years and that is difficult for people to grasp what it really means.
'Magnitude 8 is by no means a surprise in the Himalayan region. The problem with speaking about this to people is that immediately they will ask, when is the next one? And we cannot give a definitive prediction. This does not exist.'
What is likely though, he said, is that for citizens in Nepal or Myanmar, a major earthquake should be expected within their lifetime. And that should be impetus enough for governments to take more action to prepare. Mountain communities are highly vulnerable to earthquakes in Nepal. (Photo: CNA/Jack Board)
The Himalayas remain understudied and less understood in terms of tectonics than other parts of the world, experts agreed.
For a region with such large seismic hazards, it presents a challenge to governments, already pressured by a lack of institutional capacity and in the case of Nepal, political stability.
The country has experienced multiple changes of government, parliament dissolutions and dramatic shifts in party coalition power agreements.
Planning for a future disaster that may or may not happen anytime soon has fallen down the list of political priorities as a result, Subedi said.
He listed five major parameters that can contribute to the safety of the country: Education, scientific understanding, preparedness, awareness and funding. All are currently lacking in Nepal, he said.
The country has no formal earthquake-specific curriculum in schools. Nor is there a dedicated geophysics or seismology degree available at Nepal's universities.
The local seismologists working in Nepal, of which there are less than 10, all needed to go overseas to learn their craft.
For Adhikari, himself working under the government's Department of Mines and Geology, the lack of resources available to his team is an ongoing concern.
'We have doubled our monitoring capacity but if we talk about the people working in the lab, we are even more limited compared to 2015,' he said.
'The Nepal government has not developed or invested in our research and development, except doing what we were doing before the (2015) earthquake.'
A 2022 government report found that 'most of the attributes of the Emergency Preparedness and Response systems in Nepal are currently weak or were not in place', meaning handling a medium to large-scale disaster would be 'a huge challenge'.
It cited a lack of government investment, an over-reliance on development partners and a 'dysfunctional emergency operational center network' as reasons why this was the case. A survivor looks at her earthquake damaged house in Rukum District, northwestern Nepal on Nov 6, 2023. The earthquake killed more than 150 people and left thousands homeless. (Photo: AP/Niranjan Shrestha)
From a research perspective, the reality for scientists - locally and from overseas - is that funding seldom comes unless a major earthquake occurs to trigger it. The Gorkha quake in 2015 was a clear example of this, according to Hetényi.
'You remember how concerned the population was for a certain time, and then in the first three years it was easy to get funding to study in Nepal. And then suddenly attention turned elsewhere and people were not remembering so much anymore, especially abroad. So that's a problem,' he said.
The recent Myanmar earthquake, which occurred on the Sagaing fault and links seismically to the Himalayan region, could present more research opportunities in the near future, Karplus said. At the very least, it could spark some attention from citizens living in risky areas.
'Having regional earthquakes is a bit of a reminder and maybe a wake-up call or a warning to communities. Because it prompts people and especially politicians who are making decisions,' Karplus said.
In a country with a GDP less than 10 per cent of Singapore's - and such major seismic hazards - increasing knowledge and research capacity is not an easy proposition in Nepal.
'Scientific development is very close to the political structure and economy of the country. You cannot have an MIT, for example, in India and Nepal,' said Banerjee, referring to the well-known Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.
'These are the practical challenges. We know there is a solution, but to implement it on ground is the real challenge.'
Experts agreed that collecting data should be a priority for countries in the region. From there it could be disseminated overseas to experts who can help better decipher some of the mysteries of tectonic activity, of which there remain many.
'Understanding the geometry of those faults is really critical. The more data we have, the better we can understand the structures that are impacting how big the ruptures are, and that can help with understanding and preparedness,' Karplus said.
A new online tool developed by Aberystwyth University in Wales could assist in increasing knowledge and awareness about how multiple hazards, including earthquakes, could impact Nepal.
Called MiMapper, the multi-hazard mapping tool uses geospatial data to visualise natural hazard risk across the country and is freely accessible by anyone.
The earthquake visualisation builds in vulnerability and social dimensions, like the types of housing and density of populations, said Neil Glasser, the pro vice-chancellor of the university's Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences.
'It's important to say it doesn't predict when these events will take place. Because if we could, that's the Holy Grail, isn't it?' he added.
'It's a tool for people thinking about development and planning. And in countries like Nepal, they're just constantly trying to work out ways to develop the country in the face of natural disasters.' Aberystwyth University's MiMapper tool shows the earthquake hazard risks across Nepal. (Source: Google Earth)
For its part, the Nepal government has emphasised the importance of constructing earthquake-resistant buildings and building up disaster preparedness.
'Post-2015 earthquake reconstruction has brought significant achievements. Building on these lessons, we must focus on developing well-planned settlements and enhancing preparedness for future disasters. The government will lead these efforts in consultation with experts,' said Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli at the country's National Earthquake Safety Day event on Jan 15 this year.
The annual event is a centrepiece to the government's efforts to raise public awareness about earthquake risks, while also commemorating the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake. It often coincides with various activities held around the country.
The country has launched some initiatives to retrofit schools, hold earthquake drills and conduct teacher training on earthquake response. But Subedi says much of the education at schools has been left to organisations like his and he does not have the capacity to scale to a national level.
He estimates that more than 20,000 people have received training on how to construct an earthquake-proof house since 2015, a critical gap in knowledge for vulnerable mountain communities who largely continue to build their dwellings the same way as generations past.
Using various public data, he says about 166,000 people have received earthquake awareness training, which is about half a per cent of the country's population of almost 30 million people.
Better planning in the future can help save lives and reduce the amount of post-disaster recovery funds that need to be directed towards reconstruction.
But the 5.6 magnitude quake in western Nepal in 2023 was more proof that the message about safe building practices was not reaching the communities that need it, Adhikari said.
'Their construction is following what their parents used to do in the past. No-one is there to educate them, to tell them, okay, this is safe or this is unsafe,' he said.
Nepal also lacks early warning systems for residents, a common feature for giving residents extra time to move to a safe place when an earthquake strikes, a system successfully rolled out in countries like China, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.
Even if they were warned now, there is a lack of understanding about what to actually do, Adhikari said.
'They do not practise what to do during an earthquake, before the earthquake or after the earthquake. There is no mechanism for that. That means the people are still at risk,' he said.
'We have to work together to reduce the risk of earthquakes. We have to start from today and we know what to do.'
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