The Tremor of Tragedy

Chandra Prakash Kala is a faculty member in the Ecosystem and Environment Management Division at the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal, India. He was born and raised in a Himalayan village in the Indian State of Uttarakhand, situated near the border of Nepal. He has more than 20 years of research experience in Himalayan ecology and ecosystem management and has taught risk assessment and disaster management. In this feature, he shares a personal and professional account of the events that have occurred in Nepal since April 25.

APRIL 25

AFTER A LATE BREAKFAST on Saturday, while browsing the Times of India, I suddenly felt my chair shaking. I was sitting on a swivel chair in my home in Bhopal, and it was difficult to guess whether I was shaking the chair or if it was shaking all on its own. I sat completely still for a good few seconds, but the chair continued to shudder. The railing of a half-opened wooden flap of the cabinet suddenly caught my attention. I gazed around and was stunned to notice that many objects in the room, including the TV and the fan were shaking. Once my mind had caught up to the fact that this might actually be an earthquake, my family and I rushed outside.

It was about a quarter to twelve and the outside temperature was unbearably hot, as it usually is in April. I took shelter in the shadow of the Indian Jujube grove just opposite of my house. I looked around. There was no meddling and no movement and I assumed the tremor had stopped. I went back inside the house and switched on the TV to find out what had just happened. Breaking news about the earthquake was running on every channel.

I quickly learned that the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake was in the village of Barpak in the Gorkha district, about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Nepal’s capital city of Kathmandu—about 680 miles (1100 km) away from Bhopal. Around 12:20 p.m.—while watching Times Now, an English news channel in India—I felt another tremor that lasted for about 20 seconds. This second 6.6 magnitude tremor was one of the 25 aftershocks that took place in the very first day, affecting Nepal and surrounding Himalayan states.

Alarmed about what happened, I spent the rest of the day glued to the TV, watching news updates. News reports showed the damage in Kathmandu. The famous Dharahara—a nine-story tower built in 1832—had collapsed. The plazas and areas opposite the old royal palaces in Nepal also suffered severe damage. Historical temples including Krishna, Shiva Parvati, Kasthamandap, and Panchtale had been destroyed. People were trapped in the rubble, roads were destroyed, connectivity was jeopardized, and electricity had been lost.

The tremor also triggered avalanches in the upper reaches of the Himalayas—a particularly vulnerable area¹—affecting hundreds of climbers on the world’s highest mountain summit, the Everest.

Within a few hours after the earthquake, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, chaired a high-level meeting to review the situation in Nepal and India. The Indian Government immediately took a leadership role in helping the disaster area and launched Operation Maitir, a massive relief operation in Nepal. Military transport aircrafts were used to rush National Disaster Response (NDRF) rescue teams, sniffer dogs, and relief materials—including food, medicine, and rescue tools—to the affected areas. The first planes landed six hours after the earthquake had struck.

The immediate, proactive actions that India took to help a neighboring country in urgent need made me realize that humanity is the most powerful tool we have in earthquake response. It doesn’t recognize administrative and political boundaries. My heart went out to everyone in Nepal and the actions of the government reflected that sentiment.

The NDRF rescue efforts in Kathmandu continued through the night, although the total darkness—the electricity was down in the affected regions—complicated the search for survivors. At 9 p.m., nine hours after the first tremor, the death toll in India and Nepal was already 1,457, including 19 Mount Everest climbers. Tourists and pilgrims were stranded in airports and hospitals were over flowing with injured people. Survivors—afraid of aftershocks—set up makeshift shelters outside of their homes, or what was left of them.

APRIL 26

The next day it became clear that the earthquake had turned large parts of Kathmandu into a heap of rubble. The historical sites especially suffered significant damage. About 80 percent of the temples in Kathmandu were destroyed. By the evening, the death toll had risen to 2,200 in Nepal, 62 in India and 18 in Tibet, in addition to the 19 mountaineers who had died on Mount Everest.

The reports on casualties and property damage in rural areas were meager or non-existent because roads, which were already inadequate, were inaccessible due to rubble and landslides, and there was no information going in or coming out of these areas. The only way to reach the region northeast of Kathmandu, the epicenter of the earthquake, was by air. Choppers were able to drop food, but they were unable to land and move the injured people out due to extremely treacherous terrain.

India intensified the rescue operations and deployed 35 buses and 19 aircraft (including six civilian planes) to Nepal. On April 26 alone, the Indian Air Force rescued 1,040 people. In addition to the rescue and medical teams, India also sent a number of damage assessment teams.

Around 8 p.m., sudden heavy rainfall in Kathmandu forced rescue workers to cease their efforts. Rescue operations didn’t resume until the following day. The Times of India reported that about 24,000 men, women, and children were staying in 1,200 tents (Soondas 2015). There was a general shortage of food, drinking water, and medicine, caused in part by the Nepalese government’s inadequate response and ine cient bureaucratic methods that delayed the distribution of emergency supplies. It was clear that the country was not prepared for a disaster of this scale. A large amount of international aid, including food and medicine, was held back at the airport in Kathmandu because of the rigid custom rules and regulations of local authorities (BBC News 2015). I felt frustrated when I heard about this situation, since valuable time was being lost and the fate of victims buried alive under the rubble was jeopardized. People in my immediate surroundings shared this frustration about Nepal’s inadequate response and time wasting practices. I took it to heart since I have many friends in Nepal and I was worried about their wellbeing. Fortunately they were able to get in touch with me via the Internet and knowing they were safe was a relief.

APRIL 27

During the first two days after the quake, the Indian Air Force was able to evacuate about 5,400 people, including 2,500 Indians who were brought back to India. At the same time, Nepalese citizens who were working in India were desperate to get back into their country. Many of these people—concerned about their families back home—got stuck on the roads into Kathmandu due to blockages and landslides. On Mount Everest, about 1,000 people were stranded because of avalanches and were airlifted out of the area.

APRIL 28

As the offcial death toll from the earthquake surpassed 5,000, international aid agencies and foreign governments began to intensify the much-needed financial assistance and supplies to Nepal. Rescue operations in Kathmandu continued, although bad weather—this time hail—again impeded the efforts. Electricity got restored in some parts of the city, but prices of goods and services began to skyrocket and many people decided to leave Kathmandu. Others stayed and began to vocalize their frustration with the Nepalese government. They complained about the government’s slow and inadequate disaster response and its inability to provide enough food and clean water for the survivors. I really sympathized with these people since I was well aware of the fact that delays in relief response can cause major public health disasters.

APRIL 29

Four days after the earthquake, people slowly started to resume their lives. Shops opened in Kathmandu and peo- ple began to move back into their homes. Authorities as- sured the public that electricity would be restored to the entire city. The earthquake remained front page news and reports of fatalities and devastation in other regions began to trickle in. For example in the Sindhupalchowk district— situated about 43 miles (70 km) from Kathmandu—1,820 people died, 80 percent of the houses were destroyed, and more than 3,000 people were still missing. A total of eight million Nepalese were a ected by the earthquake, accord- ing to a UN report. Of those, 1.4 million were in immediate need of food assistance (UN News Centre 2015).

MAY 4

Nepalese government reports released on May 4 stated that 7,365 people died and 14,355 were injured as a result of the earthquake (OCHA 2015). In total, Nepal and the surrounding Himalayan states, experienced more than 140 aftershocks after the initial earthquake on April 25. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Office of the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nepal reported that the earthquake destroyed 191,058 homes and damaged another 175,162 (OCHA 2015). Apart from food, water, medicine, and other necessary items, the United States donated $10 million through the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment (USAID), the United Kingdom donated $7.6 million, China $3.3 million, and the United Nations released $15 million from its central emergency response fund (Regan 2015). So far, $68 million has been provided in the form of contributions, commitments and humanitarian pledges (OCHA,2015). I can only hope that more organizations will raise money to support the earthquake victims. Unfor- tunately, many countries are overextended. There is only a limited amount of money available for humanitarian relief in the world, and an endless supply of crises.

MAY 12

A little more than two weeks after the first quake, while sitting in front of my computer in my office, I felt a distinct shudder around 12:35 p.m. Within couple of minutes my mobile phone buzzed. It was my wife, asking if I had felt the tremor. It was only then that I realized it was yet an- other aftershock.

When I got home from work, I once again watched TV to find out what had happened. I couldn’t believe that, just as most of the rescue operations were completed and signs of ordinary life were returning to the disaster-stricken area, another high intensity tremor had shaken the same region. The epicenter of this 7.3 magnitude aftershock was about 80 km (50 miles) east of Kathmandu, close to the Tibetan border.

This aftershock sent further waves of panic and despair across the region and caused another 66 deaths and 1,988 injuries. With the fresh casualties, the total death toll since the April 25 quake has now crossed 8,400 and is expected to rise even further.

THE AFTERMATH

The earthquake, which clearly exposed Nepal’s lack of disaster preparedness, may have caught the country o guard, but for geologists and seismologists it didn’t come as a surprise considering the country’s proximity to fault lines. And the resulting devastation didn’t come as a surprise either, because Kathmandu is lled with poor construction built on soft sediment. It is common knowledge that construction should be built on bedrock rather than soft sediment, buildings should be secured together to prevent them from being knocked over, and they should be reinforced with steel (Subedi et al. 2013; Arya et al. 2014). If adequate building and planning codes had been enforced, many people could have survived the quake.