More than two years after Nepal’s Earthquakes-2015

Disasters bring damage to physical, socio-economical and environmental sectors. Timely recovery from such disasters requires proper crisis management strategies and implementation; otherwise recovery from disasters can be painfully long. Nepal faced major earthquakes on April 25th and May 12th, 2015. About 9,000 people died, more than 20,000 people got injured, and about 800,000 houses were damaged. Thus, this paper s aim is to describe the recovery and reconstruction status in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake with a focus on challenges towards crisis management. Data from the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) and Central Bureau of Statics (CBS) were analyzed. In Nepal, out of the approximate 800,000 (private and government) damaged houses, NRA reports completion of only 55,623 houses and 137,925 houses are still under construction. Similarly, many other losses are still unrecovered. Challenges in crisis management are mainly due to lack of good governance, effective communication, speed of response, adequate human resources and funding, effective plans with fully functional acts, policies and framework. Additionally, Nepal faces the following challenges in crisis management: distribution of grants, utilization of grants, grant recipient to be head of household (since majority of male migrants are head of household and who are away for job), lack of human resources, expenses of house construction materials, lack of local materials and geographical structure. For an effective crisis management, Nepal has to develop and implement strong plan at all stages of disasters - rescue, rehabilitation, reconstruction and recovery. The plan has to especially train people from local to national level as a regular program in the development sector. This paper has included NRA s new policy initiative, and the partners are local government, like minded ministries and banks.