Nepal's 7.8-magnitude earthquake has claimed more than 8,500 lives, and is now officially the deadliest event in the country's history.
Since the April 25th tragedy, commentators and experts have opined about Nepal's lack of preparedness, with indictments of shoddy infrastructure, poorly enforced or non-existent building codes, and inadequate response systems. International attention, aside from an uptick after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake on May 12th, has waned. Regrettably, factors underlying Nepal's lagging structural resilience have received little coverage. Beyond disaster preparedness, true resilience is a net product of economic, social, and political conditions, factors which in Nepal's case continue to threaten the country's stability.
Nepal now faces the realities of a slow, challenging, and likely unsung recovery. Addressing the difficulty of moving forward amidst this seeming hopelessness, a recent Guardian article argued "the mental and emotional impact of an earthquake is the other invisible disaster." If any good comes of this disaster, aside from inspirational rescue and survival stories, it is that lessons from the impacts will be woven into a larger narrative concerning the continuing plight of Nepalese people. Even before the earthquakes, Nepal was not the commonly held impression of a simple-but-satisfied country with cheerful hillside villages.