Nepal earthquake: A glimmer of hope from the rubble in Kathmandu

I knew something bad had happened the Saturday before last when our house in Delhi swayed menacingly and the windows rattled for more than a minute just before noon. The last time and place I experienced such a sensation was in 2008 in Hong Kong, and that turned out to be the 8.0 magnitude Sichuan earthquake more than 1,000km to the northwest, which killed nearly 80,000 Chinese. This time the cause was an earthquake measuring 7.8 in central Nepal about the same distance east of Delhi.

At first glance Kathmandu seemed uncannily untouched by the largest earthquake in the area for three generations. By the time I arrived on Sunday night, we knew that tourists had died in the collapse of the 19th century Dharahara tower in the city centre and that a fatal avalanche had swept through Mt Everest base camp.

Thousands of the capital's residents were camped in the streets and open spaces for fear of further tremors. But the airport was open, the roads were smooth and there was no sign of devastation in a shoddily built south Asian urban area that houses more than 3m and has long been considered highly vulnerable to earthquakes.

Only a few years earlier, researchers had predicted that an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or above would probably kill 100,000 people and destroy 60 per cent of all buildings in the Kathmandu valley. Six months ago builders finished reinforcing the offices of the World Bank in the grounds of the Hotel Yak & Yeti.

Some residents of Kathmandu suffered nothing worse than a bad fright and broken crockery. A manager at the Hotel Annapurna said one employee was seriously injured by a falling ceiling and more than 1,000 plates were smashed. As the days passed, however, and news trickled in from outlying areas, it became clear that the victims numbered in the thousands. They were crushed to death in their scores when ancient monuments, cheap hostels or their own homes collapsed on top of them, particularly in Sindhupalchok to the northeast of Kathmandu. Remote villages in the Gorkha district near the epicentre were also badly hit. The total death toll exceeds 7,000.

Yet Kathmandu seems to have narrowly escaped a horrific cataclysm of another order altogether. If this earthquake, the latest in a series occurring every 80 years or so as the Indian subcontinent pushes inexorably northwards into the Eurasian landmass, had been more intense, one of Asia's fastest-growing cities might have been utterly destroyed. That is what Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times, assumed when he was shaken by the earthquake while trekking in the hills and looked down at the cloud of dust shrouding the capital.

But on his return home he noticed something that also became obvious to me as I drove around central Nepal: while many structures of brick or stone had fallen or cracked, almost every modern building made with even the most rudimentary pillars of steel-reinforced concrete was intact. "8.0 is the threshold for ferrocement," he said. "I think if we had had an 8.2 or 8.3 . . ." His voice trailed off.

Such an earthquake would not just kill more people. By destroying bridges and blocking with landslides the roads that link Kathmandu to southern Nepal and India, it would also make it almost impossible to provide quick relief to the survivors.

None of this came to pass in the valley. Amid the stench of death where buildings have collapsed near the Kathmandu bus terminal, Nepalis and foreign aid workers are engaged in the grim task of extracting corpses from the rubble. But there is no reason for any disruption to supply chains for food and fuel or for the particularly rampant spread of disease in an already unsanitary city.

The worst problem is probably fear itself. Kathmandu's traumatised residents have fallen prey to wild rumours, including a tale that the BBC has announced the imminence of another, larger earthquake.

Optimists are beginning to make themselves heard. Deepeksha Rana, the Annapurna's food and beverage director, mourns the loss of life and destruction, but is among those who calculates that the next big quake is not due until 2095. "After this," he says, "we're safe for another 80 years." It is a reasonable hope, but it is not a certainty.

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