Nepal was not ready for a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the 25th of April that killed almost 5,000 people, and that number is expected to increase.

Most of the buildings were built by homeowners with no engineers overseeing their work. But years after a devastating earthquake in 1994, the government imposed new building codes. Also in 1998, the government worked to make a disaster plan, but were unable to. Susan Hough, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, stated, “People have been trying for a long time to improve preparedness and resilience, but they’re resource-strapped”. Hough also included that they were expecting at some time for Nepal to have a earthquake of this magnitude, but were never expecting as many buildings to be still standing.

“Our government is not strong enough to handle this,” Kshitiz Nyaupane, a local, stated. The Nepalese government had been having a hard time prior to the earthquake. Within the last eight years, Nepal has gone through nine different prime ministers and having no constitution is causing a frustration of the people towards the instability of the government.