Deadly Earthquake In Sikkim And Nepal

We are often speculating and ruminating about safety and dangers inherent in foreign travel. Somalia, Yemen and Nuevo Laredo are probably better left unvisited these days. Syria too. But how do you factor natural disasters like earthquakes into your travel plans. Today, for example, had you been walking by the British Embassy in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, you might have been one of the 5 people killed by falling bricks when a disastrous earthquake struck on the Nepali-Sikkim border. Hundreds are injured and 18 are reported dead so far but the death total is expected to rise after the 6.8 magnitude quake.

Or you might have been walking along far from the quake, somewhere in northern India-- the whole region shook-- and been trampled by a panic-stricken mob... which is just what happened to a man in Bhagalpur in Bihar. And then there were the two persons were injured in Kathmandu's Central Jail when they tried to make their escape when the quake struck.

We were just in Nepal. The infrastructure-- like all of it-- is fragile and precarious... at best. And the quake rocked the whole country, which is historically marked by what various earthquakes have done in the past, but still totally unprepared for earthquakes from any perspective. Our favorite part of the trip-- aside from trekking in the mountains-- was our visit to Bhaktipur. Here's a photo from Bhaktipur I just found:



We'll update this post as more news comes in on the damage. Meanwhile, remember, disaster can strike almost anywhere. In March Kiplinger offered a list of the 10 American states most at risk of natural and unnatural disaster. It was done in terms of insurance risk but I guess you can take it into account when you make travel plans as well! Top on the list, predicatbly, are hurricane alley states, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas and #4 is New York (terrorist attacks), followed by-- back to hurricanes-- Mississippi. Now tornadoes and cyclones put Oklahoma at #6, tornadoes (no mention of domestic right-wing terrorism) and they close out with Alabama, California ("floods, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and strong Santa Ana winds that fuel wildfires"), Missouri, and Ohio ("more than 30 earthquakes between 2002 and 2007").

The death toll continues to rise and Monday morning there were 48 reported deaths throughout the region. Rescue operations are hampered by bad weather and impassable roads.

24 hours in and the latest death toll is 74 people in India, Nepal and Tibet. It's expected to continue rising as outside forces make their way to outlying regions.


UPDATE: Kathmandu Earthquake Risk Is Something To Take Into Consideration

I loved Kathmandu when I was there in 1971 and I was eager to go back. In the '90s it wasn't as good-- but which place ever is?-- but still fascinating enough for another trip. This summer I was back again-- and that was the last time. The pollution alone is enough to keep anyone sane away. And now scientists are warning that Kathmandu is "a high-risk city unprepared for the next 'Big One'."

Experts say Kathmandu is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world with an overdue earthquake predicted to kill tens of thousands of people and leave survivors cut off from international aid.

British geologist Dave Petley described the latest tremor, which killed eight people in Nepal, as a "wake-up call" for the overcrowded capital, home to two million people and connected to the outside world by just three roads and one airport runway.

...Nepal is a highly seismic region, lying above the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates that created the Himalayas, and major earthquakes have hit the Kathmandu Valley every 75 years on average over recent centuries.

One quake destroyed a quarter of homes in Kathmandu 77 years ago, and geologists believe the area is at immediate risk of an 8.0-magnitude tremor-- ten times the size of last year's Haiti quake which killed more than 225,000 people.

Downtown Kathmandu is a maze of narrow, winding roads where rickshaws and cars jostle with cows to squeeze past dilapidated clay, brick and timber houses.

"The building stock is not seismically strengthened, suggesting that in a big earthquake there will be large numbers of building collapses," said Petley, of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Britain's Durham University.

GeoHazards International, a US-based research group, has measured the likely death toll from a quake of 6.0 magnitude or higher hitting cities in Asia and the Americas.
Kathmandu topped the list of 21 cities with 69,000 potential deaths, ahead of Istanbul and New Delhi.

The Kathmandu Valley has experienced rapid, uncontrolled urbanisation in the past few years and the lack of infrastructure and deep-rooted poverty leaves it desperately under-prepared for an earthquake, experts say.

Building codes are rarely enforced, few emergency drills are carried out, and the fact that Kathmandu lies on the site of a prehistoric lake filled with soft sediment also exacerbates the risk.

The one single-runway airport and all three access roads would likely be destroyed in a major quake, meaning the city could be stranded.

Urban Gadabout: How I spent the earthquake, plus gadding to the North River, SI's Freshkills Park, and Constitution Island (opposite West Point)

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

So I guess it was a little before 2 this afternoon. Hey, if I'd known it was going to be history, I'd have checked the time -- I just thought it was, well, I didn't know what the heck it was, but I considered and dismissed "earthquake" as a possibility. We don't normally have earthquakes on the 14th floor of my building in the Financial District (Lower Manhattan) of New York.

So like I said, it must have been a little before 2, and I was at my desk in my cubicle on the 14th floor of a pretty sturdily built building (at least in the 2½ years my company has been here, the building has never moved that I'm aware of), and for a while the floor and everything kind of trembled, and after awhile people sort of looked at one or another, and somebody mentioned that there had been a 5.8 earthquake in Washington. Only I didn't make out exactly what that person said; I reconstructed it later after I found out that there had been a 5.8 earthquake centered in northern Virginia, which was also reported as 5.9 or even 6.0 Online somebody joked that S&P had upgraded the earthquake from 5.8 to 6.0.

Then we were hustled into the conference room to hear our HR director, who happened to be in California (as it happens, our office manager was also out of the office -- coincidence?), via conference call tell us to do whatever we felt necessary for our safety. She also warned us about taking precautions before getting on a subway, but somebody else reported that New York Transit was reporting no service delays. (And New York Transit wouldn't kid us now, would it?)

Me, I figured if an earthquake is coming to get me, I really wouldn't know where to go to escape its clutches. I figure you're just as likely to walk into it as to escape it. When I went back to working on the InDesign file I had been working on, the computer claimed that the file was damaged. I rebooted and tried reloading it, and while the program still voiced suspicion about the file being damaged, it then accepted and saved some small changes, and the asterisk went away. So far the file seems to be OK.

And that's how I spent the earthquake. We're not used to this sort of stuff here, but believe me, I take it seriously. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

STILL, I HOPE MOTHER NATURE ISN'T PLANNING MORE OF
THIS SEISMIC STUFF JUST NOW, WITH URBAN GADDING AHEAD

Constitution Island, viewed from the West Point side

As I write, I'm getting read to leave the office for this evening's Hidden Harbor Tour of the "North" (i.e., Hudson) River waterfront, and then tomorrow I'm actually taking off work for my first look, courtesy of a tour offered jointly by SI 350 (a volunteer group promoting celebration of Staten Island's 350th birthday -- apparently someone thinks Staten Island is 350 years old; I wonder how Mother Nature feels about that) and the NYC Parks Dept., at the work-in-progress Freshkill Parks, built with huge infusions of technology, cash, and manpower on top of the old trash megadump.

The Parks Dept. has been offering tours, but I could never figure out from the website where I would have to get to, or therefore whether I could get there via public transit. This tour, however, is leaving from in front of the library in St. George, the part of Staten Island where the ferry lands -- and that I know how to find.

Then Saturday I'm actually venturing outside the five boroughs of NYC, well up the Hudson River to venture onto Constitution Island, which is opposite West Point on the west bank of the river, and is only open three weekends a summer. I'm expecting to meet up with a Shorewalkers group at the Metro North train station in Cold Spring, on the east side of the river from the island.

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