UNIVERSITY OF

CALCUTTA
MAHARAJA SRISCHANDRA
COLLEGE
20, RAMKANTO BOSE STREET,
Kolkata 700003

EVS PROJECT ON :

Nepal Earthquake

NAME: DIBYENDU DAS

SECTION: A
ROLL NO: 56
STREAM: B.COM (HONS) 3 RD YEAR
REGISTRATION NO: 212-1121-0089-
14
 CONTENT
I. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
II. INTRODUCTION
III. WHAT IS EARTHQUAKE??
IV. EARTHQUAKE FAULT TYPE
V. UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF THE EARTHQUAKE
VI. TERMS RELATED TO EARTHQUAKE
VII. Causes Earthquakes
VIII. GEO-ENGINEERING ASPECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE
IX. Amount of energy released during different Earthquake
X. EARTHQUAKE OF NEPAL-2015
XI. About Nepal
XII. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARTHQUAKE

XIII. Impact of the Nepal Earthquake

XIV. The Disaster Situation
XV. Disaster Risk Profile
XVI. GLOBAL AND REGIONAL TECTONICS OF NEPAL AND ITS CLOSE VICINITY

XVII. UNESCO World Heritage Site

XVIII. BRIEF GEOLOGY OF NEPAL AND KATHMANDU AND SURROUNDINGS

XIX. CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I gratefully acknowledgement my endless
indebtedness to my Supervisor for this work (field
work) Prof. Anindita Bhatterjee.
Kolkata, without whose guidance and support this
field studies report, could not have been
prepared.

Dibyendu Das

Dept. of
Environment
 INTRODUCTION
It was a year ago that Ram Giris home imploded.
The earthquakes that killed nearly 9,000 people in
Nepal in April and May 2015 twisted the brick walls of
the two-room structure, spilling the exterior into what
had been the familys living space. Here is a brick-filled
cavity where there was once a roof, now temporarily
covered with corrugated tin sheets, and the small
annex that housed the familys livestock been reduced
to a dusty pile of rubble. To keep whats left stable, Giri
spent his savings on wooden trusses to hold up the
walls. It can collapse at any moment, he says, gazing
over his village in the countrys Sindhupalchok district,
still strewn with debris from the 7.8- and 7.3-magnitude
quakes. All around him, desperate villagers remain
stuck in shaky tarpaulin tents and small tin sheds that
seem barely strong enough to withstand the monsoon
rainstorms due this summer, let alone another temblor
in this earthquake-prone nation. Yet nearly a year after
the first devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which
stuck on April 25, 2015, there is no sign of any
rebuilding.

An earthquake (also known as

a quake, tremor or temblor) is the perceptible shaking
of the surface of the Earth, resulting from the sudden
release of energy in the Earth's crust that
creates seismic waves Earthquakes can be violent
enough to toss people around and destroy whole cities.
The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to
the frequency, type and size of earthquakes
experienced over a period of time.

What is An Earthquake ?

An Earthquake is the sudden

movement or vibration in earths crust
result that creates seismic waves.
Release of the energy due to intense
pressure + active internal dynamism of
the earth
The seismic activity of an area refers
to the frequency, type and size of
earthquakes experienced over a period
of time.
Alter the surface of the Earth,
thrusting up cliffs and opening great
cracks in the ground and
 Earthquake fault types
There are three main types of fault, all of which may cause
an interplate earthquake: normal, reverse (thrust) and strike-
slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dip-slip,
where the displacement along the fault is in the direction
of dip and movement on them involves a vertical component.
Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is
being extended such as a divergent boundary. Strike-slip
faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip
horizontally past each other; transform boundaries are a
particular type of strike-slip fault. Many earthquakes are caused
by movement on faults that have components of both dip-slip
and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip.
The most important parameter controlling the maximum
earthquake magnitude on a fault is however not the maximum
available length, but the available width because the latter
varies by a factor of 20. Along converging plate margins, the dip
angle of the rupture plane is very shallow, typically about 10
degrees.[8] Thus the width of the plane within the top brittle crust
of the Earth can become 50km to 100 km (Japan, 2011; Alaska,
1964), making the most powerful earthquakes possible.
 UNDERSTANDING THE
IMPACT OF THE
EARTHQUAKE
Since the initial Flash Appeal issued on 29 April,
further damage due to the 12 May earthquake has
increased the number of people affected and in need.
The approaching monsoon, in addition to underlying
vulnerabilities such as poverty, caste, and accessibility,
is expected to increase the challenges for earthquake-
affected communities over the coming five months.

The severity index (Figure 1) illustrates differences in

the severity of needs across the 14 priority affected
districts following the 25 April and 12 May earthquakes.
The index combines indicators that measure
earthquake impact (damaged buildings, injured
persons, migration), physical vulnerability (landslide
and flood risk, road accessibility), and socio-economic
vulnerability (caste/ethnicity, gender inequality, Human
Development Index).
Affected districts can be divided into three broad
categories of severity. Districts in the hills and
mountains towards the north are most severely
affected; rural districts further south less severely so,
and the three districts of the Kathmandu valley
(Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur) are least affected.
 Terms Related To
Earthquake
Measure of the amount of energy released during an earthquake. It is
usually expressed using Richter scale.

Professor Charles Richter noticed that at a constant distance,

seismograms records of earthquake ground vibration of larger
earthquake have bigger wave amplitude than those of smaller
earthquakes, and for given earthquake, seismograms at farther
distances have smaller wave amplitude than those at close distances.
Now commonly used magnitude scale, the Richter scale.

There are other magnitude scales viz,

1. Body wave magnitude

2. Surface wave magnitude and

3. Wave energy magnitude.

It is defined as logarithm to the base 10 of the maximum trace

amplitude, expressed in microns, which the standard short-period
torsion seismometer would register due to the earthquake at an
epicenter distance of 100 km.
 CAUSES EARTHQUAKES
The short answer is that earthquakes are caused by
faulting, a sudden lateral or vertical movement of rock
along a rupture (break) surface.
The primary cause of an earthquake is faults
on the crust of the earth.
A Fault is a break or fracture b/w two blocks
of rocks in response to stress.
This movement may occur rapidly, in the
form of an earthquake or may occur slowly, in
the form of creep.

Here's the longer answer: The surface of the Earth is

in continuous slow motion. This is plate tectonics--the
motion of immense rigid plates at the surface of the
Earth in response to flow of rock within the Earth. The
plates cover the entire surface of the globe. Since they
are all moving they rub against each other in some
places (like the San Andreas Fault in California), sink
beneath each other in others (like the Peru-Chile Trench
along the western border of South America), or spread
apart from each other (like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge).
Some major causes of earthquakes on
basis of its causes are:
Surface
causes
Volcanic
causes
 Tectonic
causes

Surface Causes
The two main types of waves are
body waves and surface waves.
Body waves can travel through the earth's
inner layers, but surface waves can only
move along the surface of the planet like
ripples on
water. Earthquakes radiate seismic energy
as both body and surface waves.

Great explosions, landslides, slips on

steep coasts, dashing of sea waves,
avalanches, Mining, Nuclear testing and
some large engineering projects cause
minor tremors. Some of them are manmade,
other are natural.
 Volcanic Cause
A volcano tectonic earthquake is
an earthquake induced by the movement
(injection or withdrawal) of magma. The
movement results in pressure changes in the
rock around where the magma has experienced
stress. At some point, the rock may break or
move.

There are two general categories of

earthquakes that can occur at a
volcano:

volcano-tectonic
earthquakes

long period
earthquakes
 Tectonic Causes

Plate Tectonics, the Cause of Earthquakes.

Theplates consist of an outer layer of the Earth, the
lithosphere, which is cool enough to behave as a more
or less rigid shell. Occasionally the hot asthenosphere of
the Earth finds a weak place in the lithosphere to rise
buoyantly as a plume, or hotspot.

Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building,

and oceanic trench formation occur along plate
boundaries in zones that may be anything from a few
kilometers to a few hundred kilometers wide. To watch a
simulated fly-by along New Zealand's plate boundary.
GEO-ENGINEERING ASPECTS
OF THE EARTHQUAKE
The epicentral area is very mountainous and
valleys are steep. Furthermore, sedimentary
rocks are heavily folded and faulted resulting
from the tectonic movements and subjected to
weathering due to intense freezing-thawing
cycles as well as water-content variations. The
mass movements are quite similar to those
observed recently in the 2005 Kashmir
earthquake and 2008 Wenchuan earthquake
(Aydan et al., 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). According to
satellite imagery and aerial photographs
(ReliefWeb, NASA, Mass media reports), huge
mass movements were caused by the earthquake
(Figure 16). The common forms of mass
movements can be categorized as surficial
plastic deformations of top soil or weathered
zone, planar and wedge sliding and flexural or
block toppling. When these mass movements are
of large scale, there is a strong possibility of large
valley-blocking mass movements triggered by
the Nepal earthquake in the high mountainous
areas. Such debris dams were already spotted in
satellite images (ReliefWeb, NASA and Indian
Space Research Organization). The mass
movements were observed in Gorkha district as
well as Tibetan side of Himalayas.
Amount Of Energy Released
During Different Earthquake

A magnitude 4.0 earthquake is only

equivalent to about 6 tons of TNT explosives, but
because the Richter scale is a base-10
logarithmic scale, the amount of energy released
increases quickly: A magnitude 5.0 earthquake is
about 200 tons of TNT, magnitude 6.0 is 6,270
tons, 7.0 is 199,000 tons, 8.0 is 6,270,000 tons,
and 9.0 is 99,000,000 tons of TNT. As you can
imagine, 99 million tons of TNT is enough to
destroy just about anything, and is the equivalent
of about 25,000 nuclear bombs. (This is
according to the Center for Earthquake Research
and Information and the U.S. Geological Survey).
EARTHQUAKE OF NEPAL-
2015
 ABOUT NAPAL

Total population: 23,151,423 with

annual population growth rate at
2.25
 The country has an area of 147,181
square kilometres (56,827 sq mi)
The world's 93rd largest country by
area and it is also the 41st most
populous country.
Nepal is bordered by China to the
north and India to the south
Nepal is disaster prone country due
to:

Rugged & fragile geomorphic

condition
Variable climate conditions
Increasing population
Poor economic conditions
Unplanned settlements
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE EARTHQUAKE
The earthquake occurred in Gorkha district
near the village of Barpak, which was completely
destroyed by the earthquake. The distribution of
aftershocks, which extend up to 130 km to the
east of the epicenter, suggests that the rupture
have propagated from west to east, potentially
leading to more severe destruction in
Kathmandu. Most of the aftershocks were at the
relatively shallow depth of less than 15 kms
below the Earth's surface.
Earthquakes produce two types of potentially
destructive waves that move through the earth
from the point of the fault: primary, or pressure
waves and secondary, or shear waves. Primary
waves, also called P waves, exert a force of
compression and travel through rock at speeds
that can exceed 225 mph. Secondary waves, also
called S waves, exert a shearing force and travel
only half as fast as P waves, but are capable of
causing much greater damage when they reach
the surface.
 Impact of The Nepal
Earthquake

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred 80 km

to the northwest of the Nepalese capital,
Kathmandu on 25th April 2015. This earthquake
is the largest to have hit the Nepal region in over
80 years.
 The Disaster Situation

Up to 900,000 homeless

60% of buildings destroyed

Only two or three of the 14 hospitals in the valley with

an in-patient capacity of thirty or more still functional

95% of water pipes & 50% of pumping stations &

treatment plants seriously affected; water supply
disrupted for several months.

60% of telephones unusable for up to a month

40% of electricity lines and all sub-stations non-

functional for a month

50% of bridges & many narrow roads unusable

because of damage & debris

Kathmandu international airport isolated by collapse

of access roads & bridges; runway partially or totally
unusable.
 Disaster Risk Profile

This earthquake, the worst quake to hit Nepal (a

poor South Asian nation) since 1934, collapsed
buildings and houses, leveled centuries-old temples
and triggered avalanches in the Himalayas.

Nepal is ranked as 11th most risk country in world

in terms of relative vulnerability to earthquake &
30th with respect to flood [UNDP/BCPR, 2004]
Nepal remains as one of the global hot-spots for
natural disaster [World Bank, 2005]
Entire country falls in high earthquake intensity
belt-high seismic scale.
 GLOBAL AND REGIONAL
TECTONICS OF NEPAL AND
ITS CLOSE VICINITY
Apparently, about 225 million years ago, the Indian
continent was a large island situated off the Australian
coast. A vast ocean called the Tethys Sea separated the
Indian continent from the rest of the Asian continent.
Later when Pangea began to break apart, India began
to move northward. About 80 million years ago, India
was located just south of the Asian continent, moving
northward at a rate of about 9 m a century. Eventually
India collided with Eurasia about 40 to 50 million years
ago, and its northward advance slowed by about half.
The Himalayas are also in continuous motion. Himalaya
mountain range constitutes the northern plate
boundary of the Indian plate. Chaman fault in the west
and Sagaing fault in the east is the transform plate
boundaries. While Chaman fault is a sinistral fault, the
Sagaing fault is a dextral fault. The indentation of the
Indian plate into Euroasia resulted in the formation of
Altyn Tagh and Karakorum faults in the central Asia
(Figure 4).

Himalayan Frontal Thrust (HFT), the Main Boundary

Thrust (MBT) and Main Central Thrust (MCT) are the
main faults in the region and they are part of the Great
Himalayan range (Figure 5). Presently the main tectonic
displacement zone is the Himalayan Frontal Thrust Fault
(HFTF) System, which comprises Himalayan Frontal
Fault at the edge of the Indo-Gangetic plains, and
several active anticlines and synclines to the north. The
Himalayan front in the western Nepal is characterized
by several discontinuous segments of the HFT and its
subsidiary faults (Figure 6).
UNESCO World Heritage site

UNESCO has declared 7 World Heritage Sites, all

inside Kathmandu Valley. These seven World Heritage
Sites are all amazing man-made wonders still standing
majestically some of them as old as 2500 years.

Kathmandu Durbar Square

Lies in the heart of the capital and is popularly known as

the Hanuman Dhoka Palace - the Gateway of Hanuman -
an ancient seat of Nepalese Royalty

were
constructed
from the 15th
18th centuries
BRIEF GEOLOGY OF NEPAL
AND KATHMANDU AND
SURROUNDINGS
 Nepal is located in the centre of the Himalayan
concave chain, and is almost rectangular in shape with
about 870 km length in the NWW-SEE and 130-260 km
in N-S direction. The Main Frontal Thrust (MFT) system
consists of two or three thrust sheets composed
entirely of Siwalik rocks, from bottom to top mudstone,
multi-storied sandstone and conglomerate (Chamlagain
and Gautam,
2015). These
sedimentary
foreland basin
deposits form an
archive of the final
stage of the
Himalayan
upheaval and
record the most
recent tectonic
events in the entire history of Himalayan evolution
since ~14 Ma. The northernmost thrust sheet of the
MFT is truncated by the Lesser Himalayan sequence
and overlain by unmetamorphosed to weakly
metamorphosed rocks of the Lesser Himalaya, where
the Lesser Himalayan rock package is thrust over the
Siwalik Group along Main Boundary Thrust (MBT). In
western Himalaya crystalline thrust sheets are
frequently observed within the Lesser Himalaya (LH).
The Lesser Himalayan zone generally forms a duplex
above the mid crustal ramp (Schelling and Arita, 1991;
Srivastava and Mitra, 1994; Decelles et al., 2001). The
Main Central Thrust (MCT) system overlies the Lesser
Himalayan MBT system and was formed in ca. 24 Ma.
 CONCLUSION
In response to the earthquakes that devastated Nepal in April and
May, 2015, Water Charity and Wine To Water have partnered to
support the people affected by these events with clean water. Sawyer
filters and water holding buckets were procured to enable victims of
the destruction to have access to clean water.

The need and urgency of this relief cannot be overstated. More than 3
million people in Nepal lack access to clean water and sanitation due
to infrastructure and homes being completely destroyed throughout
much of the country. So, in addition to dealing with the magnitude of
the destruction of the earthquake, and the pending monsoon season in
a couple of weeks which will make living conditions much worse for
many, the lack of clean water will compound these problems with an
increase in water-borne illnesses.

In an effort to make the highest impact possible, water filters were

distributed to the following territories within Kathmandu Valley.
Upon the original site assessment of each territory, a local community
leader was chosen and trained on program management. This step has
proven to be very helpful as these community leaders have ensured
the proper care and use of the filter over the weeks following the
distribution.

Wine To Waters CEO, David Cuthbert, joined the ground team to do

site visits and assessments on these locations and are pleased to report
nearly 100% adoption of the use of the filters in the field. It is clear
and extremely evident that they are greatly appreciated by the
recipients and highly helpful during this difficult time.