ABSTRACT
I write this chapter from the perspective of a social scientist, a human geographer who was investigating community resilience to earthquakes, as well as a practitioner who had worked for the United Nations (UN) in different countries for over a decade. First, I reflect on my experiences during and after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal as well as on my role as a privileged foreign researcher who could leave for safety. Briefly, I reflect on what the earthquake allowed to happen in Nepal in the subsequent two years. The Gorkha earthquake sequence (including the 12 May earthquake) killed almost 9,000, injured 22,000 and devastated almost 800,000 homes (GofN, Ministry of Home Affairs et al., 2015). Most homes remain to be rebuilt over two years later due to delays in government handling of the disaster. Second, I consider ethical issues in relation to being a foreign researcher in a disaster. I consider how to approach settings, which are vastly different from one’s own, and how to consider providing support to people in difficult and trying times. Natural hazard events occur with regularity but humans turn them into disasters. Over 40 years ago, O’Keefe et al. (1976) put forward the argument that there is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster’. Society does not seem to have learnt the significance of this statement.
