Bikash Suwal, a lithe, tanned Nepali trekking guide, has climbed the 18,805-ft Yala Peak in the towering Himalayas. But since a powerful earthquake rocked Nepal a week ago, he has been afraid to climb the stairs to the rented rooms he shares with five family members.
Like many of his neighbours in the usually thrumming Gongabu area of Kathmandu, Suwal fears that the buildings still standing are so poorly constructed that they may be toppled by aftershocks.
Fear has coursed through Nepal's storied capital, Kathmandu, since last Saturday's quake. Ancient temples in Kathmandu crumpled from the intense pulses of seismic energy that the earthquake unleashed, as did dozens of buildings constructed after a modern building code was put in place. That has ignited public alarm that the collapses exposed not only flaky concrete and brittle pillars, but also a system of government enforcement rotted by corruption and indifference.
Residents and experts say the corruption is an open secret, as evident as the unlicensed five- and six-storey buildings that have risen in recent years, displacing two-storey ones that sprang up in former farm fields starting a decade or so ago. The developers and landlords who slap up the buildings, the residents and experts say, know they will rarely be punished by officials, who are often happy to look the other way for a price. "We pay like this," said Bir Bahadur Khadwada - the owner of the Kalika Guesthouse - as he rubbed his thumb with his index finger under his dining table. "They go away."
Nepali experts said bribery, lax law enforcement and a lack of land-use controls left buildings vulnerable to seismic disasters. But several said those problems were symptoms of a deeper failing: the government's inability to keep up with a rapidly urbanising society. Since the nation's building code was introduced in the 1990s, the population of greater Kathmandu more than doubled. It grew to 1.74 million in 2011, the year of the last census, from 675,000 in 1991 as migrants began pressing into the city, drawn by jobs and services.
Geology further complicated matters: Kathmandu is the ancient bed of a lake, and haphazard urban growth has spread construction to risky terrain, said Richard Sharpe, a New Zealand earthquake engineer who helped draft Nepal's building code.
The Nepali authorities estimate that nationwide, nearly 150,000 dwellings collapsed. But larger, modern buildings, including urban hospitals and schools, mostly withstood the earthquake, reflecting more robust construction.
Nepal's building code set what experts call admirable standards, but officials often enforced it in a perfunctory way, despite experts' warnings that the country was in a region where a giant earthquake was a real risk, said Niyam Maharjan, a building engineer who works for the country's Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development.
The effects of Kathmandu's uncontrolled growth are distilled in Gongabu, where dozens of buildings collapsed and others slipped off their foundations and onto their sides.
The area is a maze of four-, five- and six-storey buildings - mainly shops, guesthouses that cater to poor Nepalis travelling to and from Kathmandu for work and business, and small apartment buildings. Residents said bribery to allow illegal construction was common, and land-use planning unheard-of.
Days after the earthquake, many residents of New Bus Park remained in tents outside their homes and scoffed at the government's suggestion that most houses in Kathmandu were safe enough for them to move back indoors at night.
"I'm still scared," said Suwal, the trekking guide. "We will have to move back into our homes, but maybe the house is too weak for the next time. Can they tell us?"
Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from New Delhi
©2015 The New York Times News Service
