NEPAL EARTHQUAKE
The Destruction Land
The April 2015 Nepal earthquake (also known as the Gorkha earthquake) killed more than 8,800 people and injured more than 23,000. It occurred at 11:56 NST on 25 April, with a magnitude of 7.8or 8.1.Its epicenter was east of the district of Lamjung.It was the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal.
Reasons
- Earthquakes occur when strain builds up in Earth’s crust until it gives way, usually along old fault lines. In this case the strain is built by the collision or convergence of two plates.
- It sits on the boundary of two massive tectonic plates – the Indo-Australian and Asian plates. It is the collision of these plates that has produced the Himalaya mountains, and with them, earthquakes.
- In Nepal, a chunk of rock about 9 miles below the earth’s surface shifted, unleashing a shock wave—described as being as powerful as the explosion of more than 20 thermonuclear weapons—that ripped through the Katmandu Valley.
- Not only because of the massive forces involved in the tectonic collision, but also because of the type of fault line the country sits on. Normal faults create space when the ground cracks and separates. Nepal lies on a so-called thrust fault, where one tectonic plate forces itself on top of another.
Destruction
Casualties
Safety Measures
- Appliances such as televisions, microwaves, hot water boilers, and refrigerators must be securely fastened to the floors and the walls. Otherwise, they move and topple, killing as readily as building collapse.
- Shut off the kitchen gas.
- Take shelter under a desk, table, bed or doorway .
- If you are outside, move away from buildings, steep slopes.
- If you are in a moving vehicle, stay inside the vehicle until the shaking stops.
- Financial as well as social resources are needed to set up earthquake resistant buildings.
- Governments at all levels need to be functioning and competent in order to engage with processes such as urban planning and earthquake-resistant construction.
Challenges faced by the rescue team
- Governments across the globe have deployed emergency assistance following Nepal's deadliest earthquake in nearly a century. But response teams face increasing difficulties as the death toll continues to rise.
- Aid groups and governments intensified efforts to help Nepal on Sunday after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated the capital Kathmandu and surrounding areas the day before.
- A team of 45 rescue experts from Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg left on a Belgian military plane on Sunday, bound for Nepal.
- Japan's emergency services team, comprised of 70 experts, were also dispatched on Sunday.
- India deployed two military transport panes, while Pakistan sent two C-130 aircrafts carrying food and essential supplies, including a 30-bed hospital.