Why Nepal Wasn’t Ready for the Earthquake

The death toll has been amplified by a paralyzed political system

The shock of the past few days in Nepal gave way to despair, frustration and a few larger questions on Tuesday, as the death toll from the devastating earthquake that wracked the small Himalayan nation over the weekend rose above 4,000 — a number that will almost certainly rise once international rescue teams reach rubble-filled outlying areas surrounding the capital, Kathmandu.

Photo: Narendra Shrestha/EPA

The massive quake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale and followed by three days of panic-inducing aftershocks, has left the country — already one of the world’s poorest and least developed — reeling and utterly helpless.

But while the earthquake is tragic, seismologists said it didn’t come as a surprise. Nepal’s location on a fault line and a lack of emergency resources made a devastating earthquake inevitable, heightening a sense that more should have been done to make typically ramshackle local buildings more resilient, and so saving countless lives.

“It was no surprise whatsoever. This is the earthquake we’ve been waiting for,” Susan Hough, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, tells TIME. “People have been talking about a magnitude 8-ish earthquake hitting Nepal pretty much exactly like this one did. What surprises me is how many buildings are still standing.”

TIME The Brief, April 28, 2015

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