Earthquake day 2072: What went wrong in Kathmandu?

What are the reasons behind the huge loss of life and property in Kathmandu ?

 I and my group of 5 member tried to pick out the major reasons behind the huge devastation in Kathmandu valley. We picked out the 4 major reason behind it with model on the occasion of earthquake safety day held in Bhaktapur Durbar Square on Magh 2, 2072.

The reasons are as follows:

Soil and underground history

How ?

·      Magnification of ground acceleration

·      Extraction of huge amount of underground water

·      No soil taste and proper selection of foundation

What happened??

·      Diversified nature of destruction

·      Collapse of houses in Balaju Area

·      Not even a crack on some old building

·      Huge Cracks of Road in Kausaltar

·      Underground water oozing on earth surface

Soft  Story Building

How?

·      Making of commercial building with open underground spaces

·      Modifying residential houses for garages, stores , shops,etc

·      Use of glass instead of brick walls

·      Heavy loads on upper storey compared to the ground

What happened??

·      Building collapse from a weak point or column fails

·      Sandwich of house floors

Wrong Building practices

How?

·      High rise building with small base to support load

Completely wrong

·      Building houses without following building code like GCR(Ground Coverage Ratio) , floor height, Set Back etc.

·      Modification of residential houses to commercial houses

·      Using houses other than purposed construction

·      Cheap and weak construction material

Wrong practice but reduced the load of wall on slab by putting glass on the slab

 What happened?

·      Major devastation caused due to this

·      Huge cracks in columns and beams

·      The reason behind collapse of many houses

Congested and old structures

How?

·      Use of same old building from different generation more than the actual life of house without proper maintenance and reinforcemt

·      Old structures, monuments and temples at the verse of failure

·      No inspection of old structures from society and government regularly

What happened?

·      Massive loss of life and property

·      Huge destruction of valuable monuments and temples

Some other  photoes of earthquake day are:

Survey being taken whether earthquake is disaster or hazard by Manish

Apil Describing the model

Soft story and wrong building practice model

Kshitz describing model

Finally me describing the model