New Delhi--Nepal's earthquake should act as a wake-up call to neighbouring countries which have failed to learn lessons from their own disasters and where shoddy construction and rapid urbanisation could lead to death on an even greater scale next time round, experts say.
Given its location on a seismic faultline, another major earthquake had long been feared in the Himalayan nation following a disaster in 1934 that flattened much of the capital Kathmandu.
Experts and engineers had been racing against time to try to better prepare the landlocked country, which like many of its neighbours is plagued by poverty, urban overcrowding and corruption, for the big one.
But the conditions that have long raised alarm bells for Nepal are mirrored across the South Asian region, regularly hit by quakes that have left tens of thousands dead and homeless in the last two decades.
"The quake could have happened anywhere in this region," said Hari Kumar, regional coordinator for South Asia at GeoHazards International.
"This (the Nepal disaster) is an opportunity for the rest of Asia to turn things around. We can't go on building death traps," Kumar, whose organisation works to reduce quake risks, told AFP.
As buildings crumbled in Nepal around midday on April 25, the quake was felt more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away in New Delhi, where residents fled onto the streets, and Bangladesh, where walls of busy factories cracked.
The region regularly suffers quakes as the Indian subcontinent gets pushed below the Eurasian tectonic plate.
Among the worst of the recent disasters was a 7.7 quake which killed around 25,000 people in the western Indian state of Gujarat in January 2001 while 75,000 died in a quake centred on Pakistan in October 2005.
Experts warned the region's governments against turning a blind eye to the devastation in Nepal, imploring them to work harder to reduce their own vulnerability.
AFP
