Construction Issue
April 25, 2015, Nepal Earthquake, also known as the
Gorkha Earthquake, shook Nepal with a magnitude of
7.8 leaving over 8,800 people dead and 23,000
injured. A major aftershock with a magnitude of 7.3
followed on 12 May killing more than 200 people and
injuring more than 2,500 people.
The earthquake also increased the risk of landslides
and spread of disease epidemics in the country due to
population displacement and impacts on water and
sanitation systems. Millions of people were left
homeless and driven away from their homes and
livelihoods as they tried to escape the disaster. It was
the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal since the
1934 Nepal Bihar Earthquake but it is very unlikely to
be the last.
Recently Japan too suffered back to back
earthquakes on 14th & 16th of April 17, 2016 resulting
in severe in and around Kumamoto, with numerous
structures collapsing and catching fire. But the loss of
life was far less than that of Nepal. Why?
Japan is one of the most earthquake prone regions in
the world, so its modern buildings and infrastructure
are designed to resist collapse. Many lessons were
learned from the Kobe earthquake of 1995 that killed
6,400 people and forced a reassessment of the
building regulations for both residential offices and
transport infrastructure. Keep in mind that Japan, one
of the world’s most technologically advanced
countries, has the best earthquake preparation and
infrastructure in the world. Buildings stay upright,
warning systems work, and citizens are drilled in
emergency procedures. You’re probably more likely to
survive an earthquake in Japan than China, India, or
Indonesia, where building codes can be lax. Still,
earthquakes are notoriously hard to predict.
First of all we must understand, how do earthquake or
tsunami happen? Well it’s all about movement of
tectonic plates as we have been learning since our
high school. Earthquakes happen along cracks in the
earth's surface, called fault lines, and can be felt over
large areas, although they usually last less than one
minute.
If we take a look at few recent earthquake in last
decade we can clearly see that it’s all about the
movement of tectonic plates. In 2001, the Gujarat
Earthquake is believed to happen due to intraplate
movement between Indian Plate and Eurasean Plate.
In 2015, the devastating Nepal Earthquake was due to
the plate movement between the same two plates.
While a major part of Japan is on Eurasean Plate,
Japan is situated, on the joint of four different plates.
So we have got the Pacific plate and the Philippine