Nepal’s devastating earthquake was the disaster experts knew was coming.
Just a week ago, about 50 earthquake and social scientists from around the world had come to Kathmandu to get the area to prepare better for a big earthquake.
“It was sort of a nightmare waiting to happen,” said seismologist James Jackson, head of the earth sciences department at the University of Cambridge in England. “Physically and geologically what happened is exactly what we thought would happen.”
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But he didn’t expect the massive quake that struck on Saturday to happen so soon. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed at least 1,180 people and caused widespread destruction.
“I was walking through that very area where that earthquake was and I thought at the very time that the area was heading for trouble,” said Dr. Jackson.
According to USGS seismologist David Wald, a Kathmandu earthquake had long been feared, not just because of the natural seismic fault, but because of the local, more human conditions that made it worse. While the trigger of the disaster is natural an earthquake “the consequences are very much man-made,” Dr. Jackson said.
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“The real problem in Asia is how people have concentrated in dangerous places,” he added.
This is the fifth significant quake there in the last 205 years, including the massive 1934 one.
“They knew they had a problem but it was so large they didn’t where to start, how to start,” said Hari Ghi, southeast Asia regional coordinator for Geohazards International, a group that works on worldwide quake risks.
“It’s actually even made worse because of local inheritance laws that require property be split equally among all sons. So that means buildings are split vertically among brothers making very thin rickety homes that need more space so people add insecure living space on additional floors”, Dr. Jackson said.