I’ve been trying to run through task “#1024 - Nepal Earthquake, 2015, Severely damaged housing areas and IDP Informal camps, Gorkha” using some of the post-quake imagery captured by DigitalGlobe on the Wednesday after the quake. I am looking at a tile of imagery from a very rural area.

Because it is monsoon season, Nepal was covered by quite a lot of cloud for a few days after the quake, and the imagery I am working on, from the 29th April 2015, isn’t very clear. There is cloud cover over the majority of the tile and this image has very high off-nadir angle, so the recently digitised building footprints do not line up with this imagery very precisely. However, it’s the best that is available, and it’s what I have to use.

To my interpretation, it seems that most of the buildings that are visible on my specific tile held up pretty well. The majority of rooflines seem to be present and there doesn’t appear to be rubble cascading away from the building sides.

Sadly, there is an exception. One particular building footprint stood alone, someway down a valley, and was clearly in the path of a landslide. Comparing the new imagery back to the pre-quake Bing image, it seems like this building has just gone. If anyone was inside when the landslide happened they wouldn’t have had much of a chance.

I am sure when better imagery arrives we will see many many more damaged or destroyed buildings - but that doesn’t make this one any better :(