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Nepal 'Under-Prepared' For Massive Quake

Nepal was under-prepared for a major earthquake, experts have said, despite the fact it was widely known it was likely to be hit by a powerful tremor.

The magnitude-7.8 quake struck near Kathmandu on Saturday, leaving more than 4,000 people dead and thousands injured across the country.

James Jackson, seismologist and head of earth sciences at Cambridge University, has just returned from Nepal.

He said other pressing concerns, such as access to water, were given precedence over coping with a possible earthquake.

"These things happen all the way along the Himalayas. We've known about them happening for over the last few hundred years," he told Sky News.

"The situation in Asia is that the population has concentrated in dangerous places. Since the Second World War a lot of cities in Asia have had enormous increases in population for all sorts of obvious reasons.

"These are all places which have been destroyed in the past. Many of the capital cities of Asian countries have experienced that kind of disaster, but now they are particularly vulnerable.

"There is no scientific basis for any sort of forecasting or prediction on a useful timescale and indeed to encourage that is very counter-productive because it takes away the responsibility for people."

Jon Bennett, director at Oxford Development Consultants, said the earthquake was "almost inevitable" with 80 years having passed since the last big earthquake.

"Everybody knows that preparedness is everything and yet, on the other hand, we had a situation where a government itself which has some capacity issues, especially at local government level, was struggling to get in place the kind of early warning systems and the provisions that would be necessary to deal with a large-scale earthquake."

Nepal lies in one of the most dangerous earthquake zones on Earth, where the Indian Plate moves into the Eurasian Plate. The crashing of the two plates into each other forms the Himalayan mountain range.

:: You can watch a special programme about the Nepal Earthquake on Sky News - on Sky channel 501, Virgin 602, Freesat 202 and Freeview 132 - at 4.30pm and 8.30pm and across digital platforms.