Earthquakes in Nepal

According to USGS,"Earthquake is a term used to describe both sudden slip on a fault, and the resulting ground shaking and radiated seismic energy caused by the slip, or by volcanic or magmatic activity, or other sudden stress changes in the earth"
Nepal faced a really big earthquake of magnitude 7.8 not too long ago. Talking from personal experience, as I was there during the time of the earthquake, not many people seemed to know what they were doing when the earthquake hit. Many more lives could have been saved if only people were educated about the safety majors and implemented them during the time of the earthquake. A report on the recent earthquake in Nepal talks about how "Earthquakes doesn't kill people, it's usually the buildings collapsing."
Fault line passing through Nepal from USGS
After the last earthquake, many people lost their houses. When people started rebuilding their houses, the government enforced a law for houses bigger than 2 floors to need a architectural redesign to make the houses safer. Any buildings with a crack on the wall needed to be checked by engineers before people could move back in. 
Earthquakes in Nepal are really frequent and they have a historic pattern. According to BBC, Nepal has a really big earthquakes every 80 to 90 years. Hopefully they are able to spread more awareness about how to react when an earthquake hits.

The purple and the blue dots on the map above retrieved from IRIS website shows us the Earthquakes from 7-9 magnitude in Nepal in the course of 80 years.

Comments

  1. Ana GGFebruary 17, 2019 at 3:12 PM

    yes,..in areas so prone to big ones like this, buildings have to be reinforced....and people prepared....great research.

    ReplyDelete

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