Nepal Earthquake, April 25, 2015

The earthquake’s epicenter was located somewhere in the between the cities Pokhara and Kathmandu. The earthquake’s epicenter was located in Nepal, but India, China, and Bangladesh were all effected. The earthquakes magnitude reached 7.8 on the seismogram. The depth reached 8.2 km which is 5.1 miles into the ground.

The death toll in Nepal reached 8,857 and including the neighboring countries, (China, Bangladesh, and India) the total death poll was 8,964. The total amount of people injured reached 21,952.

So many houses, stores, and food markets were buried beneath the debris. Aircrafts were flown in with tents for the 22,000 in need of shelter. The first aircraft came in with roughly 4,700 tents, the next day, Pakistan sent in another 100,000 tents by aircraft.

The total cost of the wreckage was $5 billion The total cost of the wreckage was $5 billion. The earthquake flattened roughly 600,000 homes and shelters. A total of 48,000 of the classrooms were damaged or unsafe to be opened or taught in.

Nepal is very tiny on this world map, but you can still see that Nepal is a very close neighbor to China and India. This is why China and India were so affected by the earthquake and its aftershocks.

This fault line is the boundary of a convergent boundary that Nepal is currently resting on. This map also shows some of the places where aftershocks from the earthquake claimed lives.

Nepal is prone to earthquakes, because it is on the boundary of two huge tectonic plates, the Indo-Australian and the Asian plates. The collision of these two plates created the Himalaya mountains, and with them, earthquakes.

An earthquake like Nepal’s could occur on the Caribbean plate in Mexico. The convergent boundary there is very similar to the one near Nepal, and could easily produce a similar situation.

An earthquake like Nepal’s could easily take place in Seattle if the convergent boundaries started moving towards each other. There are not many things you can do regarding the plates’ movement, if the plates want to move they’ll move, but its always good to practice the usual precautions. Such as, hiding under a furniture item or in a doorway and obviously not going to the top of a building, but as close to the ground as you can get.

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