Investigating Community Resilience in Chautara, Nepal

Abstract eng:
Following the M7.8 earthquake on April 25, 2015 in Nepal, as part of the Earthquake Engineering Reconnaissance Institute (EERI) reconnaissance trip, a research team of several academics and practitioners in earthquake engineering and risk reduction spent a few days in the town of Chautara, Nepal to document the impact of the earthquake. This paper uses our multidisciplinary reconnaissance observations about a variety of community sectors to describe the state of Chautara in early June 2015 and to identify several factors and conditions that can help understand how resilient this community was to the Nepal Gorkha Earthquake and its aftershocks. The findings and observations from our team’s visit and subsequent information gathering can help inform follow-up reconnaissance investigations to the community to monitor recovery progress and to make further observations about the resilience. The research team observed impacts to buildings, including housing, hospitals, and schools; lifelines; and social systems and psychological wellbeing. For each of these community sectors, the following questions will be addressed: What were the overall impacts, performance, and recovery of the sector to date? Which elements or components proved to be critical to the function of the sector and why? Did the sector have any cascading impacts—positive or negative— on other community systems or functions? Were transformative improvements made to the subsystem (or any policies/codes/plans influencing its operation) before the disaster that somehow changed the sector and its function in the disaster? Are transformative improvements being undertaken in the aftermath of the disaster (or have they already been undertaken) to allow the community to surpass its pre-disaster state/condition? While making observations about community resilience and conducting traditional reconnaissance for these sectors, the team also systematically gathered detailed data for over 150 buildings along the main road in Chautara. We recorded parameters including building structural type, damage and postearthquake safety evaluation status, and characteristics of the ground slope for each building. The paper describes the survey and how the baseline data can used as a metric for future field teams investigating Chautara’s recovery and resilience. This paper also considers preliminary information for broad resilience questions for community of Chautara: How is the community organizing for recovery, i.e. what are the recovery goals (shelter, livelihoods, public services) and who are the recovery actors (government, NGO, residents, businesses)? What decisions are being made and how are resources being prioritized to maintain or alter community functions? What parts of the urban system survived, and why? Chautara is a municipality located east of Kathmandu at the top of a large mountain ridge at approximately 1,600 m above sea level. It is the only large municipality in the Sindhupalchok district and serves as the district's headquarters. Because the ability to swiftly respond in the weeks after the event and recover over many months varies by community size, degree of direct seismic impact, and preparedness and mitigation efforts prior to the earthquake, this case study of Chautara is one of several Nepal communities studied by the EERI team.

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