Kathmandu: The recent earthquake in Nepal has dramatically damaged almost all traditional and historic centers in the country. At Kathmandu, many houses have been totally washed out, especially the temples and palaces. As per the recent analysis, 60% of the seven World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu valley has been destroyed. All the destroyed traditional historic centers carry World Heritage Status granted by the
UNESCO. Certain parts of these centers are still seen existing, especially sculptures. Hence, UNESCO has proposals to reconstruct these ancient structures rather than removing them from the list of World Heritage Sites. The process of eliminating them from the UNESCO list may send the wrong message to the quake hit people in Nepal. As per the reports, UNESCO has been surveying among the quake hit historic centers in Kathmandu. to some extent, they have succeeded in that attempt. Now the UNESCO teams are going out to the villages outside the city to determine the damages there and propose ways to temporarily strengthen the historic monuments. Even though they are still standing erect, they have been severely damaged and may collapse at any time. The second phase will therefore be to solidify these monuments. The actual restoration work will be taking place in the third phase. Actually, the heritage structures in Nepal were quite stable. They are built in the traditional Nepalese construction style using bricks and wood. The traditional method of construction has allowed the buildings to survive during quakes. During earthquake, seismic waves used to be horizontal. There might have been vertical waves at the beginning of this earthquake. That is the reason why the earthquake hit Nepal became particularly disastrous. The buildings strengthened by concrete have not collapsed as much as those built in the traditional style with bricks and wood. While analyzing the earthquake disaster the UNESCO has to take all such matters into consideration. They are of the hope that they would be able to construct the buildings in such a way to make them capable to withstand the next possible series of quakes. As per the seismological prediction there will certainly be another big earthquake in Nepal in the future. Video on monuments destroyed by the earthquake in Nepal
