Earthquakes in Nepal: Live Map & the 2015 Gorkha Quake

Nepal sits directly on the collision zone between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates — the same collision that continues to push up the Himalayas, the world's tallest mountain range, at a few millimetres per year. This ongoing convergence stores enormous strain along the Main Himalayan Thrust, a fault system running beneath the entire country, and releases it periodically in massive, damaging earthquakes.

The 25 April 2015 Gorkha earthquake (magnitude 7.8) is Nepal's defining modern disaster. It killed nearly 9,000 people, injured almost 22,000, and destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes, according to Nepal's government and USGS damage assessments. The quake also triggered a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest and a landslide in the Langtang valley. Historically, the 1934 Nepal-Bihar earthquake (estimated magnitude 8.0) killed over 10,000 people in Nepal and northern India, ranking among the deadliest quakes of the 20th century in South Asia.

Nepal's National Seismological Center, under the Department of Mines and Geology, monitors seismic activity across the country. Kathmandu Valley is especially vulnerable: its soft sedimentary basin amplifies ground shaking, much like Mexico City, and its dense, often informally-built urban construction faces high collapse risk. Post-2015 reconstruction has pushed stricter building codes, but experts warn the Main Himalayan Thrust still holds unreleased strain capable of producing another major earthquake.