They say Kathmandu will be hit by earthquake any time soon. This article below provides good precautionary measures, especially for kids at school. - http://www.aawartan.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=268

Again, its been almost 4 months since the article was published. How soon is anytime soon?

Not only the schools but all the areas with old houses will be highly impacted area and you will be followed by sad news about looting and it will be worst than Haiti.  

I have been commenting on earthquakes related posts in Sajha since I joined Sajha. Same question has been posted several times and I still don't feel bad to post my comment. But my sincere request to the users who wanst to write or know more on this issue, please go through some of the posts in Sajha related with earthquakes. 

There is no doubt that Kathmandu is prone to great earthquake hazard. Why?

1. Whole Himalayan belt is very active and prone to earthquake due to tectonic movements of Indian plate.

2. There is huge energy buildup due to long period seismic gap in central Nepal.

3. In comparison to other parts of Nepal, Kathmandu which supports largest numbers of buildings and population has higher earthquake risk due to presence of unconsolidated sediment layers below the surface.

4 Every building higher than two stories and not constructed using earthquake engineering technique will turn into rubble if Kathmandu gets earthquake of magnitude higher than seve richter scale. So we can easily imagine the scale of loss of life and property and its aftereffects if an earthquake of higher than seven richter scale hits Kathmandu.

5. For dimag kharab soon in term of geological time scale is very long duration in term of daily life. The pattern of earthquake occurrence, its magnitude along the time is known as recurrence interval. Smaller scale earthquakes have short recurrence interval and large scale earthquakes have long recurrence interval. As we know India is shifting towards China with rate of 4 cm per year, it should be balanced by release of certain amount of energy through earthquake. It has been observed that there is no big earthquake in central Nepal for long time which means more energy is being stored and the magnitude of upcoming earthquake will be even bigger. It has been predicted that there will be earthquake of magnitude greater than eight richter scale within ten years but we don't know for sure. But one thing is sure if it doesn't happen with in ten years then next one will be even bigger than the predicted one.

I feel pity on our politicians, planners and general people who have attitude of not listening to the expert of any subject or area. It seems nobody wants to pay attention or realize the effects of the predicted earthquake until it occurs. But when it occurs, it will not give time to understand or prepare for anything!

  

So, what can be done?

ok i am not a pessmist but i still agree on some points with dimag kharab. it is true that we can't win mother nature. people say that there is nothing impossible in the world but for me there are things which we can't do for instance earthquake. we can't do anything to prevent earthquake. if it is going to happen then it is going to happen. but definitely we can prevent the loss of life due to earthquake. i agree with you that no one knows when he is going to die or what will cause his/her death. those are unseen causes but we definitely can do something to prevent the loss of life if we know that before it happens. in case of earthquake in kathmandu it is true that we don't have much time or even it happens after little longer time we can't change the infrastructre of kathmandu right now.

one important thing to keep in mind is earthquake itself will not kill that many numbers of people which will be killed by due to lack of rescue, food supplies and many more after earthquake. so the best thing we can do is to prepare ourselves for the rescue, train people how to save themselves and rescue others. another important part could be proper implication of earthquake engineering on the infrastructures getting build. i think there are building codes required to follow to build houses in kathmandu valley but i am pretty sure that very small number of people have followed that. so government should enforce those codes and government and ngos should work together to aware people.

i always blame politicians as they kept the whole country busy around them to get the position and power for their own benefits. there are so many important issues to be addressed, several important sectors to be worked out but these greedy politicians made the whole bueraucracy worthless. and the people who are in high profile position of national planning commissions, they just enjoyed their salaries and benefits but never did real thing for people and nation.

i agree that we can't prevent every natural hazards. if we want to construct a road in highly fracutred area then we need to spend a huge amount of money and labor but still that will be not permanent. if we want to make high dam in koshi river that will be also against mother nature, we need to spend hugh money but sooner or later that dam will be destroyed. people think that landslides are due to deforestation by human beings but i think that is the natural process. whether you have forest or not, whether there is human activities or not nature will try to bring the landscape from higher energy level to lower energy level. but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing anything to sustain human civilization. for me the best practice is avoid fight with nature. don't try to construct a building where there is high earthquake risk. if you are buying any piece of land or making house in kathmandu at least you can follow the engineering and geological map of kathmandu valley published by department of mines and geology which shows that which area prone for natural hazard and which area are not.