DOI: https://doi.org/10.3126/tgb.v6i0.

26166

An Assessment of Disaster Loss and Damage in Nepal

Buddhi Raj Shrestha1

Abstract
A disaster is a natural or manmade hazard resulting in an event of substantial extent
causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life or drastic change to the
environment. Due to diverse geographical coverage, Nepal is prone to various geological and
hydro-meteorological hazards. This paper tries to show the types of disaster, losses and
damages induced by disaster and analyze the trend and geographical distribution of disaster
in Nepal. This study is based on the secondary data sources. Disaste r events data were
collected from NSET and other government research papers, library etc. 26,665 events were
reported during a 45 year and 43,868 people were died, 2,828 people were missing by
disaster. Fire, flood landslide, accident and thunderstorms are major disasters in terms of
occurrences and Earthquake, flood, and landslide are the major disasters in terms of damages
and losses. The trend of disaster events is gradually increasing from the 1971 to 2000 but
after 2000 the trend of disaster is drastically increasing to 2016. Annually 593 disaster
events have occurred in Nepal. The data of impacts caused by the disasters also reveal that
the estimated annual economic loss is increasing with the increasing frequency of disasters.
The number of natural disasters as well as the number of corresponding casualties, injured
and affected people, and economic loss is steadily on the rise. Tarai and Hilly districts are
highly vulnerable than Mountain districts and Hill and Tarai region are most affected than
Mountain region due different disaster in Nepal. The Tarai and some central hill districts
are most vulnerable in terms of disasters occurrences. Among the seven provinces, province
no 3 recorded the highest number of human deaths and disasters occurrences.
Key words: Disaster, damages, losses, trend, environmental loss, distribution.

Introduction
Disaster brings the serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society
involving wide spreading human material economic or environmental losses and

1
Geographer, Earthquake Safe Communities in Nepal (NSET). Corresponding e-mail:
biraj323@gmail.com

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impacts which exceeds the ability of the affected community to cope using its own
resources” (UNSIDR, 2009). A disaster is a natural or manmade hazard resulting in
an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction,
loss of life or drastic change to the environment. A disaster can be defined as any
tragic event stemming from events. More than 100 people dead or injured and more
than 1 million US$ in damages (Burton, Kates, & White, 1978). “Hazard” represents
potential events while “Disasters” result from actual events involving humans and
what they value.

Nepal is a Himalayan country, lies in between 800 4’ to 880 12’ East longitude and
260 22’ to 300 27’ North latitude. It has an area of 147,181 sq. km. extending roughly
to 885 km. from East to West and varies from 145- 241 km. North-South. The
country is landlocked bordering with India on the East, West and South, and China
on the North. Nepal is situated in the middle portion of the Hindu Kush Himalayan
(HKH) Region (Figure 1). The altitude ranges from a minimum of about 60 meters to
8,848 meters. The climate varies with its topography and altitude. A combination of
rugged topography, high relief, active tectonic process and intense monsoon rain
have made this fragile environment vulnerable to different types of hazards and
disasters. “The country stands at the top 20th list of the most multi-hazard prone
countries in the world. The country is ranked 4th, 11th and 30th in terms of climate
change, earthquake, and flood risk respectively.” (UNDP/ BCPR, 2004). In addition,
to flood, landslide and fire, the country is prone to earthquake as it is in the
Himalayan Range where Tibetan and Indian Plates colliding each-other. Recently,
thunderstorm and the epidemics have become those disasters that have been
claiming numbers of human lives.

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Figure 1 Location of study area

Tools and techniques

This study is based on the secondary data. No exact statistics are available on the
loss of lives and property caused by historical disaster events. Few available records
are only on the events with big impacts but thousands of small and medium size
events are missing from the records.

In this context, the effort was carried out by the National Society for Earthquake
Technology – Nepal (NSET) to establish a systematic data inventory of natural
disaster events in Nepal. NSET has provided 45 years disaster data (1971-2016).
Besides that, data from Minister of Home affairs Nepal and other available reports,
relevant journals, articles etc. are collected. The data is analyzed is Microsoft Excel
and it has further linked to GIS system for further analysis and mapping.

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Results and discussion

Disaster profiles
Table 1: Hazard profile
Types of hazards Prevalence
Natural hazards
All of Nepal is a high-hazard earthquake
Earthquake zone
Flood Tarai (sheet flood), Middle Hills
Landslide and landslide dam break Hills, Mountains
Hills and Mountain, severe in areas of
elevations greater than
1700 m that are covered by glacial deposits
Debris flow of previous ice-age
Origin at the tongue of glaciers in Higher
Himalayas,
Glacier lakes outburst floods Higher Mountains, flow reach up to middle
(GLOF) Hill regions
Avalanche Higher Himalayas
Hills and Tarai (forest belt at foot of
Fire (forest) southern-most Hills
Drought All over the country
Storms/ Hailstorm Hills
Man-induced hazards
Tarai and Hills, also in lower parts of
Epidemics Mountain region
Fire settlements Mostly in Tarai, also in mid-Hill region
Accidents Urban areas, along road network
Industrial/Technological hazards Urban / industrial areas
Soil erosion Hill region
Follows disaster-affected areas and
Social Disruptions politically disturbed areas

Source: NSET 2009 (adopted from Dixit, 1996).

Nepal is one of the vulnerable countries in the world due to its fragile landscape,
climate sensitive ecosystem and socioeconomic circumstances. The ‘Himalayan
dilemma’ (Ives & Messerli, 1989) associated with the impacts of land-use changes
has, hence, become more complex owing to the additional potential effects of global

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climatic change (Sharma, Charles, Berrien, 2000). The effects of environmental

changes in high mountainous areas, such as the Himalayan region, have been
drawing significant attention of the scientists in recent years. Additionally, Nepal is
on the frontline of climate change with a wide array of climate and habitats varying
from the freezing Himalayas of the north to the hot lowland plains of the south
(ICIMOD, 2009).

The geological reasoning of Nepal being susceptible to a variety of natural hazards

is confirmed by the real occurrence of disastrous events. Most frequent hazards are
landslides, floods, epidemics, fires, earthquake and other hydro-meteorological
disasters (heavy rain, thunderstorm, hailstorm, windstorm etc.), causing heavy loss
of human lives as well as economic loss including housing and infrastructures. For
example, the 1934 Bihar-Nepal Earthquake (M8.3), the 1988 Udaypur Earthquake
(M6.6) and the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake (M7.6) were the most devastating

earthquakes in Nepal during last 80 years. Jure landslide of 2014 and the 1993 floods
in south-central Nepal resulted in huge loss of lives and properties including
housing and other infrastructures (roads, hydropower, and electricity). The
economic cost associated with natural disasters has increased tremendously. Fire,
drought and epidemics are also prevalent in Tarai region. The Hill region, including
the Siwaliks (or the Churia Range) experiences landslide, debris flow along creeks
along steep slopes, floods in the lower stages of river terraces and erosion along the
river banks during monsoon period. The higher Mountain region is exposed to rock
and snow avalanches, rock slides, and debris flows.

The trend of human death and events in 45 years’ time from 1971-2016 is shown in
figure 2. This trend line of the human death shows that there are a low number of
human deaths with low disaster events in the beginning of the 1970s and 1980s. But
after 1990s the number of human death and disaster events are highly increasing to
2004 and it is going down in 2005.After that again the trend line is drastically
increased to 2015 and down in 2016. It shows that the number of human death and
events are increasing annually.

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10000
9000
8000
7000
6000
Values

5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1971
1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
Year

Number of records Number of deaths

Figure 2 Trend of disaster

Disaster occurrences, losses and damages

The data between 1971 to 2016 reveals that fire, flood and landslide claim 54% 13%
by epidemic, 1% by earthquake and remaining 32% events are claimed by strong
wind, structural collapse, cold wave, plague and other events (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Disaster composition

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Damages and losses by disaster

Epidemics, landslides, floods, fire, thunderstorm, accident, and earthquake are some
of the common hazards in Nepal. They contribute significantly to the total annual
loss of life and damage to property in Nepal. Nepal is witnessing increasing
numbers of casualties and damages due to various types of natural and human
induced disasters many human beings have been died, injured and missing due to
different disasters. Similarly, livestock, infrastructure, agricultural land was also
have lost by disaster in Nepal. The database for 1971-2007 reveals that flood, fire
and epidemics are major disasters in terms of number of disaster records whereas
epidemic, landslides and floods are major disasters in terms of deaths due to natural
disasters (NSET, 2007). The database for the period of 1971-2016 also reveals that
Epidemic, Earthquake, landslide and flood are major disaster in terms of damages
and losses whereas Fire, flood and epidemic are major disaster records in terms of
number of disasters. The number of deaths summed up to 43,868 yearly averages of
993 and similarly 83,384 people were injured due to different disaster and 2,828
people are still missing. Besides that, the high numbers of population totaling of
79,61,992 people were affected by disaster and 8,45,947 houses were destroyed.
Most of the people were killed and injured by epidemic, earthquake, landslide, fire,
accident and flood respectively. A total of 16,795 people has lost their lives due to
epidemic followed by Earthquake that claimed 9,718. Landslide killed 5,157 people,
3891flood, 1491 by fire and various other disasters killed 1,299 people. In this way
altogether 43,824 people have died since 1971 to 2016 in Nepal. Similarly, 83,384.
people were injured by disasters among that 43,076 people have injured by
epidemic, 29,360 by earthquake, 3,123 by thunderstorms. A total of 2,842 people was
missing by different disasters and the highest numbers of people were missing by
flood that is 1,020 and followed by landslide 747 people, accident 320 people and
722 people were missing by other disaster. Earthquake is the major causes for the
huge ecomomic losses which is 70,60,580 million, 28,843 million by fire,6,113 million
by flood, and 1,393 million by landslide and 12,253.89 million rupese lost by other
disasters (Table 2).
Table 2 Damages and losses by disaster
Events Data cards Death Injured people Affected people Loss million

Earthquake 310 9,718 29,360 9,33,231 70,60,580.8

Landslide 3,421 5,190 1,925 6,07,091 1,393.5995

Flood 4,166 3,902 571 46,00,580 6,123.3941

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Fire 6,766 1,491 1,699 3,13,816 28,843.955

Epidemic 3,573 16,795 43,076 5,21,449 2.63104

Others 8,429 6,772 6,753 10,23,467 7,343.424882

Grand Total 26,665 43,868 83,384 79,99,634 71,04,287.805

Source:Nepal desinventar database, 2016.

Gorkha Earthquake 2015: Over the last 80 years, another high Richter scale
earthquake (7.6) on 25 April, 2015 and its aftershocks have been the terrible calamity
in Nepal as they affected more than one third area of the country (NPC, 2015). It is
estimated that nearly 9,000 people lost their lives and more than 22,000 people were
injured. As per the latest estimates, more than half a million houses are damaged. It
is estimated that the lives of eight million people, almost one-third of the population
of Nepal, have been impacted by the earthquake (NPC, 2015). The scale of
destruction is immense.

Destroyed Affected
Provinces Event % Death % Missing % Injured % house % people %

1 5,646 21 5,578 13 551 19 15,016 18 88,393 10 9,31,696 12

2 4,373 16 5,363 12 288 10 9,296 11 90,139 11 31,28,830 39

3 5,820 22 14,694 33 599 21 34,469 41 5,03,229 59 13,84,987 17

Gandaki 3,373 13 4,025 9 473 17 5,595 7 1,01,038 12 10,61,501 13

5 3,044 11 4,518 10 456 16 5,964 7 37,110 4 5,18,149 6
Karnali 2,097 8 4,901 11 270 10 2,249 3 5,072 1 4,45,989 6
Sudur
Pachhim 2,312 9 4,789 11 205 7 10,795 13 22323 3 528482 7
Total 26,665 100 43,868 100 2,842 100 83,384 100 847304 100 79,99,634 100
Analysis by provincial region
Table 3 shows the disaster events,damages and losses in seven provinces in Nepal.
The distribution of disaster occurrences, damages and losses are differenti in
different province. In terms of disaster events province 3 has highest numbers that is
5,646 events with highest human death (33%) . After that Province 1 is second
position in terms of disater events and human death followed by provinc 2 ,4,5,7
and 6 respectively.Comparatively province5, 6 and 7 have low number of disastrer

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events, damages and losses. A total of 79,99,634 people were affected by different
disaster during 45 years. Among that 39 % people were affected in province 2.

Conclusion
Different types of hazards are common and frequently taking place in Nepal. From
1971-2016 altogether 26,665 events and 43,865 human deaths have been recorded in
Nepal. Epidemic, Earthquake, landslide and flood are found the major disasters in
terms of occurrences and human fatalities.
The trend of disaster events has been gradually increasing from the 1971 to 2000 but
after 2000 it has been rapid until 2016. Altogether 16,795 people died by
epidemic,9,718 people by earthquake,9,092 died by landslide and flood and 6,772
died by other disaster from1971-2016 in Nepal. In the regional context, province no
3and 1 have the more vulnerable in terms of disaster occurrences and human death.
Province 4,5,6 and 7 are comparatively lower disaster occurrences, human death
compared to other provinces.

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