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| Epicentre of Earthquake 2005 |
Country Overview
- Population: 162.42 million
- Literacy Rate: 48.7% (% age 15 and over that can read and write)
- Affected Area Population: 5.7million (7 persons/HH)
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| Military Rescuing the victims |
Earthquake Statistics
- Dead: 73,000 persons?
- This includes over 18,000 children
- Injured: 70,000 persons?
- Overall affected: 3.2- 3.5 million persons
- Without Shelter: 2.8 million persons (approx.)
- Without adequate food: 2.3 million persons
- Employment loss: 325,000 persons (30%)
- Housing : 400153 shelter units destroyed or seriously damaged.2.8 million persons without shelter
- Education : 4844 destroyed 2647 damaged
- Health : 455 destroyed 119 damaged
- Roads : 4429 km damaged (37%)
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| A child happy after receiving clothes |
The Nation's Response
- Nation united in response to the natural disaster.
- All segments of the society donated in cash and kind.
- For the first time there is a strong demand from/awareness amongst members of the civil society for national/regional/local disaster mitigation and management strategies. This has presented new opportunities to mainstream disaster Risk Mitigation and Management in all programmes.
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| Damaged building |
Significant Causes of Infrastructure Damage
Engineered (Institutional Buildings)
- Quality of construction and construction materials
- Lack of seismic considerations
- Lack of monitoring
- Building codes ( dichotomy)
- Governance weakness
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| Damaged building |
Non-Engineered (Private Buildings/Homes)
- Lack of awareness about seismically resistant design
- Siting of structures
- Aspiration to modernize with insufficient knowledge of safe construction
- Cost
Opportunities
- The donor agencies (World Bank/ADB/JICA et al) as part of the Damage and Need Assessment report have highlighted the need for Hazard Risk Management as an important cross cutting issue.
- This is the right time to start building a culture of resilience and safety in all tiers of the society.
- There needs to be a sustained effort to advice and strengthen the potential programmes of the government in multi hazard risk management.
Recommendations (learning from the disaster)
- Increase public awareness about hazard risk management.
- Urgent need for de-centralised Disaster Management Plan which decentralise Disaster Response Mechanism to the District/Town Nazims (mayors)
- Build capacity of professionals and government officials.
- Safe building practices and earthquake resistant design.
- Develop and enforce simple building codes for rural and peri-urban areas. Vigilance in monitoring to ensure adherence to safe building codes.
- Introduce effective communication mechanism amongst stakeholders.
- Develop a preparedness program to minimize damage in case of future natural disasters.
- Develop a school Earthquake Safety Programme.
- Build in Environmental issues as integral part of all sector re-building plans (200 million tons of rubble/debris), forest, eco-system