Nepal quake moves capital by up to several meters: Experts

Nepal quake moves capital by up to several meters: Experts

Tue Apr 28, 2015 4:32AM

This handout photo, taken on April 26, 2015 by UNICEF, shows people walking through the ruins in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, April 25, 2015.

Experts say the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake that recently killed more than 4,300 people in Nepal has moved the ground beneath the capital, Kathmandu, by up to several meters south.
University of Cambridge tectonics expert James Jackson said Tuesday that early seismological data obtained from sound waves show that the quake may have shifted the earth beneath Kathmandu about three meters (10 feet) southward.
Sandy Steacy, the head of the department of the physical sciences at the University of Adelaide, also said Jackson’s analysis is likely to be true.
“It’s likely that the earthquake occurred on the Himalayan Thrust fault, a plate boundary that separates the northern moving Indian sub-continent from Eurasia,” he said.
“The fault dips about 10 degrees to the north-northeast. The relative movement across the fault zone was on the order of three meters at its greatest, just north of Kathmandu,” said Steacy.

In this photograph, taken on April 25, 2015, rescuers carry a Sherpa injured by an avalanche that flattened parts of Everest Base Camp due to a recent earthquake. (© AFP)

The expert, however, stressed that the devastating Saturday quake did not alter the height of Mount Everest.
Mark Allen, from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Durham in Britain, also said that the quake pushed southwards the rocks on top of the fault.
He added that the move led to an overall shortening of the Earth’s crust in the region.
“It would be simplistic to say that Kathmandu was relocated by three meters,” he said, however.

People carry their belongings amidst the rubble of collapsed houses in Bhaktapur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Neal, April 27, 2015. (© AFP)

Death toll rises
The developments come as the death toll from the country’s earthquake has risen to 4,310.
Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, the spokesman for Nepal’s Home Ministry, said on Tuesday that more than 7,953 people were injured in the quake.
Nearly 100 people have lost their lives in neighboring states.
The magnitude 7.8 quake, with its epicenter outside Kathmandu, was the country’s deadliest disaster in more than 80 years.
Kathmandu district chief administrator Ek Narayan Aryal said, “There have been nearly 100 earthquakes and aftershocks, which is making rescue work difficult.”
The worst recorded earthquake in Nepal struck in 1934 with a magnitude of 8.3 on the Richter scale. It killed over 8,500 people and ruined the cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.
DB/HJL/HMV