Situation in Nepal gradually normalising: Consul general

Branding the April 25 Nepal earthquake as a "catastrophe", its consul general said here on Friday that the situation in the Himalayan nation is gradually normalising.

"Though the country has faced death, damage, destruction, devastation, calamity, collapse and catastrophe of unfathomable scale, but gradually things are returning to normal," Chandra Kumar Ghimire, consul general of Nepal in Kolkata, said.

He was speaking at an interactive session on 'Earthquake in the Sub-Himalayan Region and West Bengal: Future Perspectives'.

The diplomat also praised the role of India in assisting Nepal in rescue and relief operations.

At the session, seismologist S.K. Nath highlighted India's vulnerability to earthquakes and claimed a strong quake of magnitude up to 10 on the Richter scale can hit the nation.

"Around 58 percent of India's land area is earthquake prone out of which 12 percent is prone to severe earthquake of the magnitude of 8 to 10 or more on the Richter scale and 30 percent of India is lying between zone 3 and 4 of earthquake vulnerability," Nath, head of the department of geology and geophysics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, said.

He said that earthquakes alone account for 50.9 percent of all deaths due to natural calamities all over the world.

"Population explosion, urban concentration and density of high rising buildings are the main causes of high casualties in India," he added.

A devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on April 25, killing more than 8,600 people. The aftershocks were felt in India in the weeks that followed.