Building back (not) better after 2015

Two adjoininig villages became household names after the 25 April 2015 earthquake: Laprak and Barpak in Gorkha district. 

The quaintly rhyming names of these two Gurung settlements evoke frightful memories of the destructive power of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The epicentre was just 8km away, and the earthquake levelled most houses in both villages as well as surrounding ones.

On the eighth anniversary of the earthquake, Laprak and Barpak hold lessons on how not to design and implement post-disaster reconstruction of homes.

Ram Gurung along with most Laprak residents had nowhere to go when his home was destroyed in 2015, so the family lived in tents in a livestock meadow in Gumsipakha up the mountain. “I did not want to go back, there was nothing to go back to,” Gurung recalls.

After the earthquake, overseas Nepalis helped the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) to build an integrated settlement in the same pasture in Gumsipakha. It was supposed to be finished in two years, but stretched to five with cost overruns to Rs576 million. 

But today, only 50 of the 573 new uniformly built houses in Gumsipakha are inhabited. Laprak is now an example of how even well-intentioned disaster response can be inappropriate. 

The houses all look the same, they do not reflect the integrated townscape of traditional Gurung villages, it is a four hour hike away up the mountain from the original village, it is colder, and gets snow in winter.  

Laprak was hit by a destructive landslide 17 years before the earthquake, and geologists had recommended relocating the village even back then. But it looks like relocating the new settlement in Gumsipakha was not a good idea. 

Read also: #NepalQuake 8 years later, Anil Pokhrel

Like the adjoining village of Barpak, most families here have members who have served in the British and Indian armies. The earthquake accelerated the outmigration from Upper Gorkha, so there was also no need to build so many new houses anyway.

Most remaining residents are farmers and pastoralists, but the new houses do not have space for livestock like in traditional Gurung homes. If the villagers stay in Gumsipakha, they would have to come down to Laprak every day to take care of the fields and animals.

“The houses and the location were just not suited for farming families like ours,” says Kamala Gurung, who has moved back to Laprak. “There is no space for storing our harvest, or to build sheds for animals or even for the children to play in.”

The new houses have two floors, and are also not fit for extended families. Locals have found that  doors and windows of the houses are not sturdy enough, and they do not feel safe with just a plastic roof.

But the biggest problem is that there are no nearby springs at Gumsipakha. The charity CARE Nepal did bring water from 19km away, but the pipes burst due to the freezing cold this winter, and residents had to fetch water from a spring half an hour away. For many, that was the last straw.

Marsi Gurung is one of the few people who still Iive in the new settlement, and thinks people will move back if the water problem is solved. “They did not plan this properly at all,” he says. “Many people have moved back to Laprak despite the landslide danger there.” 

Read also: Back to classroom for earthquake preparedness, Rachael Lau 

Same story elsewhere

In Yasikai village of Rapti Municipality in Chitwan, villagers were relocated 6km west to Kalitar after the earthquake because of landslide risk. The NRA provided land and Rs6.5 million to construct new houses, but no one lives there. 

According to Ward Chair Ashok Kumar Praja, the reason people are still living in Yasikai is that “The houses in Kalitar are not suitable for farmers, there is nowhere to keep the animals,” says Praja.

Some 56 families of Kapurgaun of Dhading district were also relocated to Bhuwalepani and Ale following the earthquake. The NRA got Rs4.5 million to build new homes, but after living there for a short time people started moving back to their original village.

The reason was the same: the new settlement had houses but no arrangements for farming and animals or any employment opportunities. And even though it was only 10km away from the district headquarters, it was four days away from their old village.

After the earthquake, the NRA authorised building 64 settlements in 32 districts out of which 20 have been constructed and 44 are still being built. More than Rs1.42 billion has been spent to construct 3,956 houses, but most are small, narrow, and built with little consideration for the climate of the locality or of the lifestyle of residents. 

Geological conditions, physical and social infrastructure, and the local economy have been used to identify villages to be relocated after the earthquake. Standards for roads, water supply, sewerage, open areas, buildings, waste management, schools, health services, and building construction have also been spelled out. 

But most of the new settlements do not follow the planned parameters because research was rarely conducted on the social, economic, cultural, and geographical aspects of the inhabitants.

Read also: In a disastrous state, Sonia Awale

Former vice-chair of the National Planning Commission Pitamber Sharma blames the government arbitrarily approving designs without understanding the local needs and social history. 

Before planning a new integrated settlement, he says, it would have been necessary to study whether it was suitable for the family for whom the house was to be built, how far the farms are from the settlement, and the livelihood of the people.

“Not enough homework was done to address the social, cultural, and economic background of the people who have lived there for generations,” explains Sharma.

Sociologist Meena Poudel says that villagers do not feel comfortable in an integrated settlement because social and cultural ties are severed in the name of modernity, engineering, and subsidies.

“People cannot live in narrow houses that are too far away from where they originally lived,” says Poudel. “People do not like development that disrupts their social, cultural, and religious relations and beliefs.”

The former CEO of NRA, Sushil Gyewali says that the houses were made smaller because there was not enough money, and admitted that integrating the livelihood aspects in the new designs were never implemented. 

Gyewali adds, “If the plan was implemented properly, there would not have been complaints like this.”

And that begs the question: why were the new designs not implemented properly by the NRA? The answer could be frequent changes in political appointees to head the NRA after 2015 that broke the continuity in planning.   

Read also: Turkey and Nepal face similar seismic risks, Surya Narayan Shrestha