Short Brief on 2015 Nepal Earthquake

Magnitude 7.9, 4600 deaths and climbing

Earthquake hit the congested capital and caused an avalanche on Mt. Everest. The Indian
Plate is moving NE at 5cm/year and the Eurasian Plate is moving N at 2cm/year. This
causes the Eurasian Plate to deform and the Indian Plate to compress.
The collision between the two continental plates formed the orogenic belt that created the
Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas.
o Convergent plate boundary, destructive plate movement
Remarkably prescient studies on historical earthquakes in the Himalayas
o Happened in the vicinity in 1255, 1344 and 1934 (larger magnitude, ~100000
deaths)
o Stress transfer (when a major earthquake occurs, it changes the conditions on the
next segments of the fold which had ruptured it loads the next segment with
stress, giving it the potential for a future quake)
o Time difference between 1255 and 1344: 89 years, between 1934 and 2015: 81
years.
o The 1934 quake loaded another segment with stress, which led to the 2015 quake.
Affected India and China too
Entire villages leveled or engulfed by landslides
Very poor accessibility in remote areas, lack of technology rescuers were digging
through rubble with their hands, unreliable communications, unstable power grid