Nepal death toll too high, engineer says
An Alberta-based engineer with roots in Nepal says houses he built in his hometown withstood the massive earthquake that devastated the country last month.
Countless lives could have been saved, Sanat Pokharel said, and homes and structures could have remained intact if proper engineering techniques had been used. Pokharel, the principal engineer at Stratum Logics, returned Friday after three weeks visiting family in Kathmandu.
He spent early Tuesday morning confirming his family and friends had survived yet another earthquake in Nepal, this one a magnitude 7.3 that killed at least 37 people, with the death toll expected to rise.
Government officials in Nepal do not adequately enforce engineering standards, Pokharel said.
Apartment buildings may be cheaply made by companies that “just want money,” he said, and people build their own homes from mud and stone, and often too high with a poor foundation.
“If they had money, they would definitely have built a better house.”
Pokharel, who has a PhD from the University of Kansas, said the government could help build small, light homes using bamboo or other materials and designed to resist earthquakes.
He has built 22 homes in the Kathmandu area, all around two to two and a half storeys and made with lightweight but sturdy materials meant to be earthquake resistant.
After the April 25 earthquake, Pokharel inspected those homes and found all to be structurally sound. He also advised other homeowners on whether their homes were OK. Many of those still standing had severe structural damage, he said.
Tuesday’s magnitude-7.3 quake hit halfway between Kathmandu and Mount Everest, hitting the foothills of the Himalayas and triggering landslides. The country faces a long recovery after April’s quake killed more than 8,000 people and flattened villages.
Pokharel was napping when that earthquake hit, as his parents watched television. The door between him and his elderly parents jammed.
“I didn’t think I would survive,” said Pokharel, at the time thinking of his two daughters, university students in Edmonton. “Best thing I could think was I would be injured.”
The next day he found the army post crumbled, the tax office collapsed and the oldest Nepalese school cut in half.
“I’m worried about schools, few hospitals, infrastructure, injured people,” Pokharel said.
“How will they be taken care of?”
Nepal has appealed for billions of dollars of international aid to help with medical care and housing for hundreds of thousands of people left homeless. Reports so far say at least two buildings have collapsed in Kathmandu, having been weakened previously by April’s quake.