Rescue teams in Nepal are searching for survivors of an earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale, recorded at 11:47 pm this Friday (local time, 6:02 pm Brasília time), in the Jajarkot region, in the west of the country. As of Saturday morning (4), more than 150 deaths and hundreds of injuries had already been reported in the biggest earthquake in Nepal in eight years.
“The number of injuries could reach hundreds and deaths could also increase,” Jajarkot district official Harish Chandra Sharma told Reuters news agency. This is because rescue teams arrived in the mountainous area near the epicenter, which is difficult to access by road, only this Saturday morning.
Nepal is among the countries most prone to natural disasters and has a very vulnerable population, in addition to not having sufficient infrastructure to deal with floods or earthquakes.
According to the Asian Preparedness Partnership (APP), an alliance created to coordinate emergency response among Asian countries, Kathmandu is the national capital with the highest earthquake risk among 21 megacities in the world.
On April 25, 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, toppling multi-story buildings in Kathmandu and triggering landslides and avalanches in the mountains. Around 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured. Entire cities became rubble, with more than a million homes destroyed and a cost of $6 million to the economy.
Eight years later, reconstruction work for the severe material damage has not yet been completed.
#die #earthquake #Nepal #Peoples #Gazette