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They’re killing Kathmandu
- (un)common sense
JUL 26 -
Kathmandu has no future as a humanly habitable city. Although I have been resisting pressure from both my family and peers to build my own house here, my family and I have made this city our home for over a decade. Personally, this city is where I was born. I grew up playing gucha on the streets around present-day Thamel. Therefore, when I say this city has no future, I do this with my heart filled with anguish. However, I have been preparing myself for this hard truth.
There are several problems in Kathmandu, indeed. Its air is becoming increasingly unbreathable. It is running out of its water. The noise pollution
has become the number one cause of deafness among an increasingly large number of the city’s population. Incidences of cardiovascular and
respiratory diseases have skyrocketed during the last two decades. It has become a rare event to meet a healthy person in this city these days.
These are major problems. But they will not lead to the death of this city. With judicious human intervention and political will, we can rectify these problems over time. We can make policies conducive towards harvesting rainwater or conserving the water resources. With a good network of bike and pedestrian pathways, we can reverse both air and noise pollution. It is heartening to know that there has been a phenomenal growth in awareness about these problems. A small but growing number of people have realised that Kathmandu could emerge as a model bicycle city. There are others who have started working on rainwater harvesting and preserving water sources in the valley.
I am still pessimistic about Kathmandu’s future. The major reason this city will go down in history as one of the most uninhabitable places on earth is the way we are making buildings. When you make money, what do you do? Build a house. When you make a lot of money, what do you do? Build more houses. At least, that is the ultimate desire for most. That’s what a friend of mine did in the last two years. Awash with money from his job at a UN agency, he built one house for his sister, another for his brother and two for himself. We met last week after four years. I had
gone to North America for my graduate studies. He headed to an African country to work as a peace building officer in a senior position.
“Anil-ji, I am, however, planning to live in Chitwan,” he said.
The irony about Kathmandu is that as those who have made money pour it into making buildings, Kathmandu’s future as a habitable city is destroyed more and more. During the last four years, there has been a phenomenal growth of buildings across the valley. Real estate skyrocketed thanks to the easy money provided by mushrooming financial institutions. These institutions themselves were becoming awash with money flowing from Nepal’s villages and small towns through networks of savings and credit groups and financial cooperatives and remittance from Nepali migrant workers. This growth of buildings will sadly lead to its own demise.
Kathmandu, as most of other places in Nepal, lies in a zone of very high seismic activities. The mighty Himalaya lies at the northern margin of the Indian tectonic plate, and much of Nepal’s landmass falls at its centre. This plate is advancing towards the north at about 5 cm a year. As it advances north, it
is sliding underneath the Eurasian Plate. This movement of the earth’s crust has made it one of the most seismically active geographies in the world. Thousands of tremors occur every year with occasional major ones.
Seismic activities in themselves do not kill a place. In fact, there had been many major earthquakes in the valley in the past. The oldest recorded one occurred around 1255 AD according to the Gopalrajvanshabali. One third of the valley’s population perished together with its temples and other public monuments. During the “nabbe saalko bhuichalo” (the earthquake of 1990 Bikram Sambat, that is 1934 AD), over four thousand people died. Tens of thousands of houses were destroyed either partially or fully, among them about five hundred public monuments. There have been major earthquakes in the 1980s.
Geologists have not figured out
the technology for predicting earthquakes. However, there is a general
consensus that a major one is going to occur some time in the near future. Perhaps this major one won’t be
bigger than those in the past. However, the context of Kathmandu Valley has drastically changed.
Much of Kathmandu’s landmass is a built environment at present, and this is fundamentally different from the past built environment. Even with large scale casualties during the 1934 earthquake, Kathmandu city could be rebuilt. It was possible because of two things. First, the valley had a lot of open space left for new constructions. Second, and more importantly, those structures that fell prey to the earthquake were built with materials that could be reused. There were very few buildings made of cement and concrete. The bricks could be reused for new buildings. The wooden beams and windows were salvageable.
Things have become unrecognisably different now. Almost all the buildings in the Kathmandu Valley today are cement-brick-concrete-iron structures. And research after research has shown that they are highly vulnerable to a relatively high intensity earthquake (read those 6 or above in magnitude on the Richter scale). So when a major earthquake hits Kathmandu, over half of its buildings will collapse. Virtually no materials from these collapsed buildings can be salvaged for reconstruction. That means almost all the materials will become rubble. To make the valley liveable again, almost all this rubble has to be removed.
Six months after a major earthquake hit Haiti’s Port au Prince, less than 5 percent of its rubble has been cleared. One estimate shows that even with more than a thousand high-powered trucks working 24/7, it will take six years to remove all the rubble. Let’s not forget Kathmandu is not Port au Prince. Port au Prince has a long coastline. Rubble can be dumped into the sea. Where will Kathmandu’s rubble be dumped? Well, where will we get the equipment required to clear the rubble in the first place? Has anybody calculated how much oil will be needed to run the trucks to transport the rubble? How will that oil be transported to the Kathmandu Valley in the first place? In what state will the valley’s streets be following this major destruction? Just begin to think about these questions and your head will spin.
Perhaps that’s why my UN friend wants to go to Chitwan. Well, in the wake of a major earthquake (which is inevitable), Kathmandu is going to be a humanly uninhabitable (read dead) city. Many might move out of this city before the calamity strikes. My humble plea to those who go out early enough is this: Don’t build your new place the way you did in the valley.
Anil Bhattarai
anilbhattarai@gmail.com
Posted on: 2010-07-27 08:31
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