Live footage of 5 story building collapse in kathmandu -

The kind of earthquake that hit Nepal last week is a periodic event in the country: the last was in 1934. For years, the international community knew another big quake was due in Kathmandu. The disaster is that we have not prepared sufficiently for a predictable event. In a world of increased urban densification, rapidly expanding informal settlements and development that outstrips a government’s ability to enforce standards, it is poorly designed and constructed buildings, not earthquakes, which are the real catastrophe.

In many cases, the rush of urbanisation has produced some of the most dangerous built environments: multi-storey buildings, over-reliance on concrete and a loss of knowledge that protected previous generations. The pressure to meet the needs of growing populations, along with improperly implemented building regulations, can lead to lethal weakness. This was demonstrated in China in 2008 when the Sichuan earthquake destroyed over 7,000 recent but inadequately engineered schools, killing thousands of schoolchildren.

Around three-quarters of all deaths in earthquakes are due to building collapse. Low-cost and informal buildings are most likely to fail, meaning that earthquakes disproportionately affect the poorest in the community, and usually leave them even poorer. The technology and skills to practically eliminate this scale of fatality are available. Yet they are not reaching the people who need them most. Earthquakes are not just a “natural” crisis: they reflect a poverty crisis.

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