Abstract
To the Government of Nepal and its citizens, the 2015 Nepal earthquake was a testament of the deep-rooted susceptibilities of the urban landscape, vulnerabilities of the affected mountain communities. Nevertheless, it also posed resounding scopes of upgrade to the national disaster management plans for the country. At the same time, this crisis revealed that the international humanitarian and nonhumanitarian responses could have been more effective if better coordination and operational procedures had been in place. This paper describes and analyzes different stages of the Nepal response from a disaster risk reduction (DRR) practitioner’s perspective, rather than from a scientific forensic view. Civil-military engagement, deployment of remote coordinators to enhance transparency, inclusive humanitarian training, and the scope of small, targeted teams are some of the many suggestions we have derived from our study’s primary and secondary sources. Despite the need for escalating reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts, at the policy level, this earthquake has helped to put Nepal on a trajectory to discuss its national DRR strategies and reinvigorate its risk management strategies in collaboration with its international humanitarian engagement.