Impacts of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake: Lessons Learnt from Nepal

Abstract

Nepal is highly vulnerable to a number of disasters for example: earthquakes, floods, landslides, fires, epidemics, avalanches, windstorms, hailstorms, lightning, gla-cier lake outburst floods, droughts and dangerous weather events. Among these disas-ters—earthquake is the most- scary and damaging. The effects of a disaster, whether natural or human induced, are often long lasting. The Gorkha earthquake of 25 April 2015 enormously affected human, socio-economic and other multiple sectors and left deep scars mainly in the economy, livelihood and infrastructure of the country. Besides the natural factors, the damages from disasters in Nepal are in increasing trend due to the human activities and inadequate proactive legislations. Fundamentally, the weak structures have been found as the major cause of damage in earthquakes. This underlines the need for strict compliance of building codes. Thus, proactive disaster management legislation focusing on disaster preparedness is necessary. This paper analyses and shows the critical gaps and responsible factors that would contribute towards seismic risk reduction to enable various stakeholders to enhance seismic safety in Nepal. Additionally, this chapter aims to pinpoint the deficiencies in disaster management system in Nepal with reference to the devastating Gorkha earthquake and suggest appropriate policy and advanced technical measures for improvement.