About EQ Sentry

The ground here will move again. We built this so more people are ready when it does.

EQ Sentry is a free, bilingual public-safety project for Nepal — live earthquake data joined to practical preparedness. This page is about why it needs to exist.

What earthquakes have cost Nepal

The arithmetic we refuse to accept as normal

These are not distant statistics. Almost every family in Nepal carries a piece of these numbers.

0
lives lost since 1934
0
homes destroyed or damaged in 2015 alone
0
in damage & losses from one afternoon in 2015
0
people left homeless into the 2015 monsoon

Figures are widely reported estimates from Nepal's Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), USGS and government records; exact counts vary by source.

A century of shaking

Every generation has its earthquake

Since instruments began recording, no generation of Nepalis has been spared. The pattern is the argument for this site.

1934M8.0

Nepal–Bihar earthquake

Several minutes of shaking flattened bazaars in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan and liquefied the eastern Terai. The original Dharahara fell.

10,000+ dead (Nepal & India)
1980M6.5

Bajhang earthquake

A far-western shock that destroyed thousands of mud-and-stone homes — the region seismologists still watch most closely today.

~100 dead
1988M6.9

Udayapur earthquake

Eastern Nepal and Bihar again. Schools and offices collapsed in the morning rush; building codes existed mostly on paper.

700+ dead
2015M7.8 + M7.3

Gorkha earthquake — M7.8

The fault under central Nepal unzipped for 140 km, directly beneath the Kathmandu Valley. Langtang village vanished under an avalanche. Seventeen days later the M7.3 aftershock brought down what the first quake had weakened.

8,979 dead · 22,300 injured
2023M6.4

Jajarkot earthquake

A midnight M6.4 in western Nepal. Modest by magnitude, deadly in effect — the same unreinforced masonry, the same cold nights outside.

154 dead
2025M7.1

Dingri (Tibet) earthquake — M7.1

Just across the border, strongly felt through eastern Nepal — a reminder that the fault does not observe boundaries, and that the west has waited since 1505.

felt across Nepal
Beyond the death toll

One afternoon can undo a decade of growth

The 2015 earthquake caused about US$7 billion in damage and losses — roughly a third of everything Nepal's economy produces in a year, gone in ninety seconds. Reconstruction needs were priced at US$6.7 billion; a million children lost their classrooms for months; tourism, the lifeline of whole valleys, stalled just as families needed income most.

And the burden lands hardest where margins are thinnest: hill villages of unreinforced stone, families whose entire savings are the house itself, farmers who lost seed stores and livestock along with walls. Poverty rose in the affected districts while the country rebuilt. An earthquake here is not only a geological event — it is a financial catastrophe that repeats every generation.

0
of a year's GDP erased in 2015
0
reconstruction bill
0
districts declared crisis-hit
0
schools & classrooms destroyed
Why EQ Sentry exists

A small part of the change

Earthquakes can't be predicted, and a website cannot stop one. But the death toll is not fixed either — it is negotiated in advance, by what people know and practise before the shaking starts. A family that has drilled gets under the table in three seconds. A go-bag packed on a calm Sunday becomes 72 hours of water. A grandmother who knows the gas valve prevents the fire that follows.

That knowledge has too often lived in English-language PDFs and conference rooms. EQ Sentry's job is to move it into every pocket — in नेपाली and English, free, fast on a cheap phone, working offline when the network fails. If this site helps even a few households act faster, it has paid for itself many times over.

Bilingual by design

Every word on this site exists in नेपाली and English — safety information can't require a second language.

Works when networks don't

The preparedness guides and emergency numbers are cached offline — available right after a quake, when they matter most.

Built on open data

Live feeds from USGS and EMSC, a century-deep catalogue, and our data published back out for anyone to reuse.

Free, forever

No ads, no accounts, no paywall. Public safety is not a product.

The science in 90 seconds

How a Himalayan earthquake happens

The Indian plate grinds north beneath Eurasia, locking the fault until it suddenly ruptures. Press simulate to release the stored stress.

~2 cm / year Indian Plate Eurasian Plate Himalaya Locked zone
Simplified cross-section — not to scale.

What you can do in the next ten minutes

How it works

1

The world listens

Hundreds of seismometers feed USGS and EMSC — two independent agencies that register every significant quake on Earth within minutes.

2

EQ Sentry focuses it

We filter those feeds to Nepal and the Himalaya, cross-check them against each other, add a century-deep catalogue — and put every word in नेपाली and English.

3

You act on it

Live map, browser alerts, district risk, drills. The distance between a tremor and an informed household, shortened to seconds.

Standing on open data

Important disclaimer

EQ Sentry is an informational service, not an official warning authority, and it does not predict earthquakes — no technology can. The map shows events that have already been recorded. In an emergency, always follow the instructions of Nepal's official agencies and call the emergency numbers. We provide this information in good faith but cannot guarantee it is complete or error-free.

Privacy

Alert sign-up details are stored on your own device; they are sent only to our alert server once delivery is enabled — and to no one else. We will never sell your information.

Full privacy policy →

Contact & credits

EQ Sentry is a public-safety initiative by Prashant Acharya. We welcome corrections, partnerships and feedback.