Although press reports attribute the growing death toll in Nepal to the April 25 earthquake, earthquakes were in fact the proximate cause of very few fatalities.  Nepalese did not die from shaking ground but, as news footage shows, because they were crushed by falling buildings.  The link between earthquakes, collapsing buildings and fatalities has been known for centuries if not millennia as has the solution: codes setting standards that ensure all structures can withstand the shock of a quake.  Since 1994, Nepal’s building code has contained several provisions requiring buildings to be earthquake proof, but as the New Zealand consultant who helped develop the ’94 code told Bloomberg News, drafting a quakeproof code is easy, “the hard thing is to get implementation.”

That is where corruption makes its appearance.  Builders can find many ways to bribe around building codes, and judging from New York Times correspondent Chris Buckley’s May 1 story, Nepalese builders found them all.  The collapsed buildings in Katmandu “exposed not only flaky concrete and brittle pillars, but also a system of government enforcement rotted by corruption and indifference. . . . Residents and building experts say the corruption is an open secret . . . .  The developers and landlords who slap up the buildings . . . know they will rarely be punished by officials, who are often happy to look the other way for a price.”

The earthquake – corruption – death nexus is a predictable part of post-quake reporting.  Stories similar to Buckley’s appeared following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2008 one in China’s Sichuan province, the 2001 quake in the Indian state of Gujarat, and the 1999 one in the Marmara region of Turkey.  But as with the Nepal story, they were based on anecdotes and impressions.  Is corruption really why so many buildings become coffins once a quake strikes?  And if it is, what can be done to curb it? Continue reading →