Kathmandu Nepal Earthquake – April 2015
I'm seeing conflicting reports about Kathmandu City. If only I could go -- but I'd be more liability than asset now.
The Richter-7.8 earthquake includes the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding mountains. with it’s epicenter 75-miles northwest, halfway to Pokara, all relatively close. And yet they say the city is less damaged than villages totally destroyed in remote areas. We'll just have to wait and see, as damage reports walk in.
I've seen some recent drone-flight videos of upland Nepal – severely incised Himalayan country that ironically I've never visited, despite my time in Nepal. First six-months in 1969 making a topographic survey of the Old (and only) City back then. And several later return visits, relaxing escape from the bustling chaos of India.
In 1969, Thamel (today's tourist center) was a vegetable stand at a cross-roads, north of the city. Since then Kathmandu has expanded greatly with refugees from Tibet and influx from villages and immigration. Fortunately the later “Ring Road” outside the Old City saved Kathmandu’s historic temples and treasures. Two other kingdom cities Patan and Bhaktapur, share the valley to the south and east.
I know construction, with nothing but tradition for building standards. I rented two small rooms on the 2nd floor in a block of ancient row-houses a block south of the famous Durbar Temple square. Below my room was the dark windowless entry-room, perhaps once formal or at other times for animals. The heavy bolted and secure wood entry door opened in from the public alley outside with two steps down to the original stone-paved ground floor.
The inner doorway opened to the central stone-paved private courtyard, with several floors of upper rooms and balconies facing inward, overseeing the private family-space below. A small temple housed the family spiritual caretaker. Every night I climbed inner stairs to the first balcony and my room above the alley-side of the inward facing house.
My room had two windows securely above the alley, with wood shutters and perhaps wood and steel bars – I don’t remember. I cooked occasionally on my kerosene Primus stove, but generally ate in restaurants, as I’ve done most of my life. A wood bed was the primary furniture, with perhaps a small table and chair. In winter, nights were cold; I was glad that I had my sleeping bag.
The alleyway, barely wide enough for a bicycle to pass a donkey-cart had accumulated hundreds of years of dirt, donkey-dung and refuse. Meandering down the center, a surface gutter carried rain and sewage runoff to mysterious drain holes – and perhaps to an ancient brick-arch underground sewer that we discovered while surveying.
That primary sewer, built during a previous ruler’s rein, ran westerly towards the river, carrying surface runoff and wastewater from a water-tap, baths and privies along the rear courtyard property walls. I also discovered an ancient underground stone-pipe fresh-water system delivering fresh water to fountains, outlets and public washing areas.
Along my daily walk to my engineering office in the white colonial British-era Municipal Building, I passed an empty space between two urban row-houses. The long collapsed rubble pile of an old house, mud- and fired-brick, plaster and broken wood beams, was being leveled above today's stone sidewalk elevation, in preparation for rebuilding a new house, now above the previous "ground-floor."
There it was evident, happening along my walk to work : three layers of living history, some 3 or 4-feet deep -- perhaps someday to be excavated, sifted and searched by future Archeologists for coins and pot-shards.
References:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/...
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/...
http://www.mappery.com/...
http://www.mappery.com/...