Beyond repair, Nepal’s quake-hit homes await bulldozers
KATHMANDU: As she stares forlornly at the teetering wreck she still calls home, Sobha Shakya knows it will soon be reduced to rubble by bulldozers poised to obliterate thousands more buildings in Nepal's devastated capital.
The mammoth April 25 earthquake that killed upwards of 7,600 people reduced large areas of Kathmandu to ruins, flattening hundreds of houses as well as several centuries- old monuments.
But nearly two weeks on from the disaster, surveyors warn as many as a fifth of all homes are no longer habitable and will have to be razed to the ground by bulldozers or wrecking balls in coming weeks. As Shakya's poorly constructed and top-heavy house started to crumble in downtown Kathmandu on April 25, she and her neighbours grabbed what they could and set up a makeshift camp in a nearby courtyard.
“These houses could collapse in a second if there is another earthquake. It's scary,” she told AFP as she stared at a row of empty houses on her street propped up by wooden planks and metal pipes.
The neighbourhood consists of buildings dating back around a century, all of which have expanded vertically to accommodate growing families.
Large parts of Kathmandu were also left in ruins by an earthquake in 1934 which killed more than 10,000 and seismologists have long voiced warnings that another disaster could be around the corner.
But builders who have added the extra floors in the decades since have routinely turned a blind eye to planning regulations and invariably used cheap cement and other sub-standard materials.
“Our grandfathers didn't think much while building these,” said Shakya, who had been living on the third of a four-storey house along with her shopkeeper husband, two sons and a daughter.
An initial survey this week of more than 15,000 buildings conducted by 2,400 volunteer engineers, sporting yellow hard hats and fluorescent orange safety vests, concluded that a fifth were damaged “beyond repair”.
“About 20 percent of homes and other buildings were totally damaged. Not collapsed completely but beyond repair due to weakened structure and foundations,” Dhruba Thapa, president of the Nepal Engineers' Association, which is heading the surveys, told AFP.
Thapa said that it made no sense to try and shore up buildings which were at high risk of collapse.
“It will cost billions and billions of rupees because you see, houses have walls and roofs caving in and whole structures have twisted and turned,” he said.
“In these cases, one will have to start afresh. Knock them (down) and build all over again,” he said.
“It's going to be a lot of work. A lot.”
Thapa added that 30 percent of the buildings surveyed needed repairs before they could be deemed 'safe and inhabitable' and half of those inspected were 'completely safe'.