Even as the death toll from the 7.9 magnitude earthquake climbs to
over 3,200 and stunned survivors struggle to come to terms with the
magnitude of the disaster, experts say the worst is yet to come.
The
quake, which reduced large parts of Kathmandu to rubble, is not the
'great Himalayan quake' that the region has been bracing for.
Down To Earth magazine
quoted Roger Bilham, geologist with the University of Colorado Boulder
who studies the seismicity of the Himalayan area as saying, "At a
magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale, the April 25 earthquake has
caused devastation but it is not the anticipated “great Himalayan
earthquake”. This does not qualify as a great earthquake which needs to
be of magnitude 8".
And Prof Sankar Kumar Nath of IIT Kharagpur, who has studied seismic
activity in the Himalayan region had an even more gloomy outlook.
“This
earthquake would only be classified as medium in terms of energy
released. That area, the 2500-km stretch from the Hindukush region to
the end of Arunachal Pradesh, is capable of generating much bigger
earthquakes, even nine on Richter scale,” he said. “If you look at it
differently, we are actually lucky that only a 7.9-magnitude earthquake
has come. I would be very happy to have a few 7.9-magnitude earthquakes
than a 9-magnitude earthquake which would be absolute disaster. The
trouble is that in terms of energy release, which is what causes the
damage, it would take 40 to 50 earthquakes of magnitude 7.9 to avoid an
earthquake of magnitude 9,” he told the Indian Express.
The
last major earthquake (magnitude 8.4) occurred in 1934, killed an
estimated 17,000 across both Nepal and India. Since then, researchers
have been tirelessly studying the 'fault' lines of the last earthquake
to predict the next one, but failed to do so, points out this article in IB Times.
Seismologist
James Jackson, head of the earth sciences department at the University
of Cambridge in England, was in Kathmandu just a week ago. Following the
7.9-magnitude earthquake, he told Associated Press that scientists knew "they were racing against the clock,".
Jackson,
who was part of a 50-strong scientists and researchers team from across
the world, said that the devastation would be huge not because of the
size of the seismic activity, but because of population pressure and
degradation of the environment.
And this has been one of the biggest issues in the region. The exploding population in the region greatly increases the risk of casualties. The Times of India quotes from a study called the Himalayan Seismic Hazard, published in Science magazine in 2001:
"The
population of India has doubled since the last great Himalayan
earthquake in 1950 (in Assam). The urban population in the Ganges plain
has increased by a factor of 10 since the 1905 earthquake, when
collapsing buildings killed 19,500 people. Today, about 50 million
people are at risk from great Himalayan earthquakes, many of them in
towns and villages in the Ganges plain. The capital cities of
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan and several other cities
with more than a million inhabitants are vulnerable to damage from some
of these future earthquakes"
The devastating impact to life and
property caused by natural disasters in the Himalayan region was
painfully evident during the devastating cloud burst in Uttarakhand
which also claimed over a thousand lives.
As pointed out by Jay Mazoomdar in an article for Firstpost
at the time, "way too many properties and lives came in the way of the
Mandakini and Alakananda on 16 and 17 June because we placed ourselves
where we were never supposed to. That part, the part that made a natural
calamity an enormous human tragedy, is entirely and unquestionably
manmade." He added that the arguments of development hardly came into
play, given the ecologically sensitive nature of the region.
Following
the Uttarakhand tragedy, many promises were made to review development
work and work towards creating an ecologically viable model that would
no longer endanger the area.
However, the Congress government in the state has since abandoned
work on the much-delayed zonal master plan for the Bhagirathi Eco
Sensitive Zone -- which was to be created by a 2012 notification
that declared 4179.59 sq km in the watershed of the Bhagirathi river
between Gomukh and Uttarkashi as a green zone to safeguard it from
unplanned growth.. The Indian Express notes that
"days after Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar refused to modify
the ESZ notification, the ministry reversed its stand on January 13 at a
PMO meeting chaired by Nriprendra Misra".
Given the magnitude of
the Uttarkashi disaster, it is not difficult to imagine how much more
destructive an earthquake in the same area would be. Given the
government's cavalier attitude toward earthquake safety
and development in the Himalayas, we may be facing our very own
humanitarian disaster -- and it won't even have to be the 'big one' for
it to really hurt.
Comments
Post a Comment