Earthquake!!

On 3rd November at 10 minutes to midnight a powerful 6.4 earthquake struck Nepal with its epicentre in Jajarkot, a remote hilly district, 330 km west of Kathmandu. Deaths have been reported and many injured.  The major cause of deaths and injuries is the collapse of weak building structures, as thousands of houses were destroyed . The earthquake is the deadliest event since the 2015 Gorkha earthquake and was felt all over the country and as far as in North India.

UNICEF say children account for nearly half of the deaths or injured due to the earthquake.

Most of the damaged houses and schools are poorly built masonry structures (mostly rubble stone in mud mortar), similar to the situation in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. Although the 2015 earthquake clearly showed that poorly constructed masonry houses or school buildings throughout the country needed to be prioritised for retrofit intervention, nothing was implemented with the urgency required, much to the outcry in Nepal at the moment ‘It’s the poor who suffer again’!