Western Today Q&A: As it rebuilds from the earthquake, how can Nepal construct safer schools?

Periodically, Western Today is reaching out to Western Washington University faculty and staff to get their expertise on topics of interest to the community.

Today, we've reached out to Rebekah Paci-Green, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Western.

Western Today: “You spend the first part of the past summer in Nepal, trying to understand how the country’s schools fared during its catastrophic spring earthquake. What did you find while you were there, and how can these findings help Nepal build safer schools as it rebuilds?”

Rebekah Paci-Green: When I went to Nepal, I wanted to systematically answer two, simple questions: did schools designed or retrofitted for earthquake safety fare better than other schools and did communities with those schools learn anything in the process? Like all good research, the answers were more complicated than I thought.

Bishnu Pandey and I spent a month examining schools and talking with communities. We matched schools conventional government schools with nearby retrofitted schools in four districts so that we could systematically understand how well these retrofits had done in urban, rural, and remote communities.

Overall, we found spectacularly success — retrofitted schools that looked untouched by the earthquake, even as similar buildings nearby had terrifyingly large cracks. In some communities, these well-built schools were among the few buildings standing. What was particularly exciting to see was that the retrofitting worked even on some of the most fragile building materials like unreinforced masonry and adobe. This event was the first time inexpensive, simple retrofitting in a developing country was actually put to the test in real earthquake.

However, our excitement was immediately tempered when we headed out into the rural and remote districts. While we found schools built to be earthquake resistant, we also found appalling collapses. We walked over the top of a stone school supposedly retrofitted, but lying in complete rubble. We peered through others that had pancake collapsed. There wasn’t even space to crawl out between the floor and ceiling. What was particularly chilling was these damaged schools were built by international humanitarian organizations or by well-meaning foreigners trying to help Nepalese communities.

In our interviews with school staff, parents, and local builders, we came to understand why earthquake-resistant construction seemed to work at one site, but not at another. It all boiled down to community engagement. When safer school construction was part of a broader community-based process of educating parents, training builders, and carefully supervising the construction, schools were safe. When communities were handed money for a safer school and basically told to figure it out themselves, the results were understandably poor.

One principal told us how they built reinforced concrete floors and ceilings because this was the fancy, new technology someone had seen in the big city of Kathmandu. Problem was, local builders in the village had never built with concrete. Nobody knew that adding too much water to the concrete mix would weaken it, or that an extra thick slab would cause the walls and columns to crumble in an earthquake.  Another teacher said she had been in charge of monitoring the school construction. She was a teacher and very knew little about construction, but there she was, put on the front lines of ensuring the school she would teach in was going to withstand an earthquake.

Perhaps our most important finding was that where communities had been part of learning how to build schools safely, they actually applied it elsewhere. Builders told us how they convinced homeowners to add reinforcing steel to their masonry homes. Principals told us how they and teachers went out and championed safer construction in their communities. Communities changed for the better and we have systematic evidence to show it.

All the stories we collected and the damage evidence we found reinforced how important community planning for natural hazards is. It also highlighted the potential failings of outside intervention. I cringe now hearing of well-meaning locals and foreigners alike rebuilding schools and houses without knowing much about earthquake-resistant construction. Some will be literally “building” the next disaster.

The reality that reconstruction is starting even now spurred us to immediately engage with the Ministry of Education, development partners, and humanitarian organizations. We met with them in Kathmandu and then in early August published a report with our findings and policy recommendations. While we’ll now start writing academic articles, we have already received heartfelt thank yous for quickly getting our research to the people making decisions now. We are currently in discussions about expanding our study and supporting the school reconstruction process.

Major disaster offer the briefest of windows where practices can and do change. I’m excited to be working with Nepalese counterparts to help make schools safer for the next generation of Nepalese students.