The past two months have not been kind on the South Asian nation of Nepal. The region was rocked by a magnitude 8.1 about 15 km below the surface, on the 25th of April this year. Leaving over 8,800 casualties and 23,000 injured, the quake drew international attention as the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 Nepal-Bihar earthquake. It triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest, killing at least 19 on what would come to be known as the deadliest day on the mountain in history. Centuries old buildings at UNESCO world heritage sites and entire villages were flattened, rendering hundreds of thousands homeless. Continual aftershocks followed the initial quake, with one shock on April 26th reaching a magnitude of 6.7. A major aftershock with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale occurred on May 12 near the border of Nepal and China, to the east of the original epicenter, leaving a death toll of over 200 and injuring over 3,500 people. Although not as deeply impacted, tremors were felt in the surrounding countries of China, Bangladesh and India.
The country occupies the central sector of the Himalayas – nearly a third of the 2400 km long mountain chain. The nation of over 27 million people lies completely within the collision zone (a high risk area, prone to seismological activity) between the Indian subcontinent and the Eurasian plates; this collision, which started in the Paleogenic Period (66-23 million years ago) continues even today as the Indian plate moves north relative to Eurasia at a rate of approximately 2 inches per year – about twice the average growth rate of human fingernails. The resulting subduction of the strong Indian continental crust under the relatively weak Tibetan crust has pushed up the Himalayan Mountains and formed the Tibetan plateau over millennia.
A study of the Main Frontal Trust published in 2014 found that on average a “great” earthquake occurred every 750 and 870 years in the east Nepal region, and the notion was reinforced by a study in 2015 that found a 700 year delay between earthquakes of significant magnitude. This study suggested that tectonic stress transfer might correlate the 1934 and 2015 earthquakes – following a historic pattern: in fact, seismologists had actually declared the region to be in risk of a large earthquake long beforehand, as far back as 2013.
The developing nation, one of Asia’s poorest countries, has since struggled to get back on its knees, with the world watching in concern as the affected villagers raced against time to ready crops before the onset of the monsoon rains. Economists and consultants have estimated that rebuilding the economy could exceed 20% of Nepal’s GDP; combined and persistent international efforts will be required in order to transform the economy into one that attracts investment by 2020.
The Governments of Nepal and her immediate neighbor India, both initiated humanitarian rescue and relief operations via their respective armed forces. At the request of the Nepalese government China and the United States have directly provided or funded rescue helicopters; numerous charitable organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF delivered aid on the ground, and countries including the United Kingdom, Canada and Belgium delivered financial contributions and aid in material donations. Advanced heartbeat detection, FINDER devices, and the latest in rescue technology was used to rescue people trapped under collapsed rubble. Volunteers from around the world used crisis mapping to aid emergency work by adding details to online maps, adding crucial information about passable roads, stranded people and collapsed buildings. Google and several other sites on the internet provided missing person services, utilizing experience about planning emergency aid work from earthquakes in Haiti and Indonesia.
Relief efforts, however, were hampered by the Nepalese Government’s insistence on routing aid through the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund and its National Emergency Operation Center in an effort to centralize the response. After concerns about the government levying import taxes and blocking consignments, it responded denying any such claims and clarifying that NGOs which already had a presence in the country could receive aid directly, bypassing the official fund. The combined bureaucratic and logistical hindrances to relief response caused many of the afflicted villagers to turn against their government’s systemic corruption; one government official allegedly stated that relief distribution might make people reliant on external support for livelihood in the future. As police continued to turn away trucks carrying aid from well-wishing private individuals and institutions and financial donations from international sources dwindled due to bureaucratic bottlenecks, an increasingly irate populace began to show signs of its discontent, with 200 people protesting outside the parliament at the capital, Kathmandu, asking for more buses with aid and workers to their villages. Elsewhere, villagers blocked trucks with supplies heading to the district headquarters, demanding that the government hasten the distribution of aid. To aggravate the situation, there were reports of medicine and vital supplies being sold at twice or thrice the normal cost despite the government order that hospitals should charge no fees in the treatment of the afflicted; the government launched a report into these reports of profiteering the aftermath of the earthquake.
The government received flak from all sides for its handling of the disaster response. Several workers and volunteers criticized the government for turning away “unofficial” small scale local initiatives funded by private well-wishers that were often the first to reach distant villages, as international aid agencies faced massive logistic difficulties – on May 3, further restrictions were placed on heavy aircraft flying in with aid supplies after new cracks were noticed on the runway of Nepal’s only wide-body jet airport, Tribhuvan airport (TIA). Perhaps the government’s intentions behind the attempt to centralize all aid response was were well placed; however, given the sheer scale of the disaster and the challenges posed by the region’s geography alone, they may have been sorely misguided in delaying and averting aid from the international community, given that every second of delay in help makes a critical difference in such a massive situation of life and death.
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