A poor Muslim family in the Habrahawa village of the Banke district in west Nepal has little means of recovering from natural disasters. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
BANKE, Nepal, Aug 11 2014 (IPS)

Barely 100 km north of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, the settlement of Jure, which forms part of the village of Mankha, has become a tragic example of how the country’s poorest rural communities are the first and worst victims of natural disasters.

Barely a week ago, on Aug. 2, a slope of land nearly two km long located roughly 1,350 metres above the Sunkoshi river collapsed, sweeping away over 100 households and killing some 155 people in this tiny settlement with a population of just 2,000 people.

“The majority of natural disaster victims have always been [from] the poorest communities and the tragic incident in Jure is an unfortunate reminder of that fact." -- Pitamber Aryal, national programme manager of the U.N.’s Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Programme in Nepal
According to the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), the country’s largest humanitarian agency, the death toll from last week’s disaster ranks among the worst in the history of this catastrophe-prone South Asian nation.

With so many dead, and fears rising that the artificial lake – created by blockages to the river – may burst and flood surrounding villages, experts are urging the government to seriously consider mapping out hazard areas across the country and integrate the management of natural disasters into its national economic and development plans.

Such a move could mean the difference between life and death for Nepal’s low-income communities, who are often forced to live in the most vulnerable areas.

When disasters strike, these groups are left homeless and injured, stripped of the small plots of agricultural land on which they subsist.

Poorest suffer worst impacts

Steep slopes, active seismic zones, savage monsoon rains between July and September and mountainous topography make Nepal a hotbed of disasters, according to the World Bank.

Over 80 percent of the country’s 27.8 million people live in rural areas, with a quarter of the population languishing below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day.

The poorest of the poor, who largely rely on agriculture, typically live on steep slopes under the constant shadow of landslides, or in low-lying flood-prone areas, and have virtually no resources with which to bounce back after a weather-related calamity, says the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“In many cases, communities that live in high-risk areas tend to have higher levels of poverty and as a result, do not have the ability to relocate to safer areas,” Moira Reddick, coordinator of the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC), told IPS.

Most homes are abandoned in the flood-prone Holiya village in Nepal but poor families often return to them in the aftermath of natural disasters. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

The NRRC, a collaborative body of local and international humanitarian and development aid agencies acting in partnership with the Nepal government, have long advocated for disaster risk reduction (DRR) to be incorporated into the state’s poverty reduction strategies in order to better provide for vulnerable communities and “minimise the impact of disasters” Reddick added.

“The majority of natural disaster victims have always been [from] the poorest communities and the tragic incident in Jure is an unfortunate reminder of that fact,” Pitamber Aryal, national programme manager of the U.N.’s Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Programme in Nepal, told IPS.

In the last three decades, landslides have resulted in 4,511 fatalities and flattened 18,414 houses, affecting 555,000 people, according to official data.

Forced to take risks

Dinanath Sharma, DRR coordinator for the international NGO Practical Action, told IPS that his organisation has made several attempts to move communities to safer locations, but their efforts are thwarted by the lack of a comprehensive relocation plan that offers both secure residence and economic viability.

“We will not move anywhere unless the government finds us a place that is fertile and good for our livelihoods,” a Muslim farmer from the remote Habrahawa villagein the Banke district, 600 km southwest of the capital, told IPS.

This simple demand is heard often throughout Nepal’s numerous villages, particularly in those that sit on the banks of the Rapti River, one of the largest in the country that has been the source of major flooding over the past decade.

Although floods have affected over 3.6 million people in the last decade alone, according to the government’s National Disaster Report for 2013, villagers continue to return to their ancestral homes where they at least have access to fertile land and water, which enables them to eke out a living.

“Where can we go really? How can we abandon our homes here and go to a new place where there is no fertile land?” Chitan Khan, a farmer from the Khalemasaha village, also in the Banke district, told IPS.

Several families told IPS they sometimes temporarily relocate to villages far from the river during the monsoon season, but always return when the rain subsides. Khan is already stockpiling food in a safer place, but he is resigned to the fact that the annual floods will wash away half his food stores in the village.

According to the ministry of home affairs, floods and landslide cause 300 deaths and economic damages of about three million dollars annually – adding to an already precarious situation in Nepal, where an estimated 3.5 million people are food insecure, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

History repeats itself

For those familiar with Nepal’s vulnerabilities, the government’s unwillingness to establish comprehensive DRR programmes is nothing short of baffling.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), for instance, has been studying and analysing the fragile mountain ecosystem across the Himalayas in Asia’s central, south and eastern regions for the last 30 years.

One of its observations included the Sunkoshi Valley’s vulnerability to water-induced hazards due to a weak geological formation and steep topography, made worse by frequent and heavy rainfall.

The lack of an appropriate monitoring and early-warning system, however, resulted in a tragedy on Aug. 2 that could easily have been avoided, experts say.

In response, the government has created a high-level committee to seek solutions for longer-term disaster preparedness, said officials.

“There is definitely serious discussion now on how to reduce vulnerability of [poor] communities and the only way to do that is to relocate them with a comprehensive economic programme,” Rishi Ram Sharma, director general of the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), told IPS.

To ensure the safety of villagers, the government must create intensive geological studies to map the dangerous areas, which could also help to also identify the safest places to relocate whole villages, explained Sharma, who now heads the newly created disaster preparedness committee.

Local aid workers told IPS the government’s emergency response, coordinated through the army and police force under the supervision of the home ministry, was efficient but that rescue workers faced challenges in reaching remote villages due to a combination of difficult terrain and heavy rainfall.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Over 90 percent of the buildings in Kathmandu could collapse in the event of an earthquake. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
KATHMANDU, Jul 12 2013 (IPS)

As the chief of building codes and earthquake safety of the Lalitpur Municipality, located about 10 km from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, Sainik Raj Singh has the tough job of cracking down on builders who fail to comply with the government’s construction regulations.

“One can make many enemies by enforcing the codes but it is high time that we follow the rules strictly,” the official told IPS in his office in Lalitpur.

"I am afraid a major earthquake will happen and we will all look back at this time and ask why more was not done and how many lives could have been saved." -- Moira Reddick, coordinator of the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC).
Singh is not on a power trip – he is simply concerned about the number of unplanned buildings in Kathmandu, which has been ranked the world’s most ‘at-risk’ city for earthquakes by GeoHazards International (GHI).

Situated on top of the active Indian tectonic plate, which is constantly pushing up against the Tibetan tectonic plate, Kathmandu was found to be extremely vulnerable to seismic activity, which can cause landslides and fires as well as quakes.

While the city’s 1.5 million residents are on red alert, the city itself is unprepared for what experts believe is an inevitable disaster: the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET) estimates that over 90 percent of existing buildings in Kathmandu and other cities in Nepal are non-engineered.

Over 3,000 non-engineered houses are added every year in the capital, according to the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC), a body comprised of government agencies, donors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and representatives of the United Nations.

An earthquake measuring a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter could kill 100,000, injure 300,00 people and displace over a million within seconds, unless disaster preparedness measures are immediately identified and implemented.

Nepal’s National Building Code was introduced in 1994 in the aftermath of the 1988 earthquake that killed 721 people in east Nepal and destroyed a large number of buildings that were not earthquake resistant.

Nearly 25 years later, implementation is gradually becoming a reality, with the government actively supporting municipalities in their efforts to regulate construction, said Singh.

He believes the first step is to ensure that residential, school and commercial buildings can withstand an earthquake of any size and scale.

Learning from Haiti

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti in 2010, killing 200,000, displacing 1.5 million and destroying 70 percent of all buildings including 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings, was a major wake-up call for this South Asian country of 30.9 million people.

Many of the buildings that crumbled in Haiti, like those in Nepal, were built without the input of an architect or engineer.

In Nepal, the primary concern is for schools and the safety of children. There are an estimated 82,170 buildings in 33,160 public schools in Nepal, of which 50 percent need to be reconstructed, according to NSET.

Over 2,000 schools are situated in Kathmandu alone, but due to lax imposition of building regulations, 60 percent of them are sitting ducks for the fallout from quakes, which would endanger the lives of 100,000 students.

A recent NSET engineering investigation concluded that the frailty of buildings was due to the use of traditional materials such as adobe, stone rubble in mud mortar or brick in mud mortar, as well as poor maintenance and flimsy roofs.

A school child in Kathmandu is 400 times more likely to die in an earthquake than a school child in Kobe, Japan, another earthquake prone city and site of the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, according to GHI.

“We need to start retrofitting all the school buildings for the safety of school children who will be most at risk during an earthquake,” Hima Shrestha, senior structural engineer of NSET, told IPS.

This summer, NSET, with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), began retrofitting 50 of the most earthquake vulnerable public schools.

The entire process, which involves trained masons adding supportive iron rods and pillars between floors, strengthening the foundations and reworking walls and flooring, can take months, and will likely only be completed by the end of the year.

NSET is now conducting a rapid assessment on the status of schools and the 125 major hospitals spread around Nepal with assistance from the World Bank, in the hopes of retrofitting as many buildings as possible.

Government efforts

According to the ministry of home affairs, this past year has seen better preparedness than previous years.

“The government is very serious about preparedness and there is now action on the ground,” said Pradeep Koirala, under-secretary of the home affairs ministry and senior official of the disaster management section.

Koirala’s office is taking the lead in national disaster preparedness through a newly established 24-hour National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), which plans to open similar centres in all of Nepal’s 75 districts.

The NEOC will be the first point of contact during emergencies, capable of coordinating domestic and international humanitarian aid and dispatching disaster relief supplies. It is also equipped with early warning systems, and will disseminate alerts to local government offices.

“We have seen an incredible increase in leadership, commitment and confidence from the government in strengthening preparedness at the national and community level,” says Moira Reddick, coordinator of the NRRC.

Today, the NRRC is tasked with implementing the National Strategy for Disaster Risk Management, a five-year initiative that began in 2011 armed with a budget of 195.8 million dollars, whose top priorities are ensuring school and hospital safety by retrofitting buildings, conducting emergency drills and training staff to respond to a crisis.

A national simulation planned for Jun. 20 to test the efficacy of emergency responders was cancelled when floods and landslides struck west Nepal on Jun. 16, killing over 16 people and leaving 875 families displaced, according to the U.N.

Another national simulation, this one led by the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), with support from the U.S. government, is scheduled for September, with the aim of testing the preparedness of the army, police units, hospitals and airports.

The main challenge now is overcoming a severe shortage of donors, experts say.

“Obtaining the necessary resources has been difficult,” Moira said, adding that school and hospital safety alone requires 57 million dollars.

She also highlighted some pressing “institutional blockages”, including the lack of a formal Disaster Management Act outlining the government’s policy on how to strengthen preparedness.

“Without overcoming these blockages and without continued support… from donors, I am afraid a major earthquake will happen and we will all look back at this time and ask why more was not done and how many lives could have been saved,” she concluded.