“Nightmare Waiting to Happen”: Experts Knew Quake Was Coming

Nepal's devastating earthquake was a "nightmare waiting to happen," a seismologist tells NBC News. Just a week ago, dozens of earthquake and social scientists from around the world came to the country's capital Kathmandu to figure out how to better equip the poor, congested area for the big one, more than 80 years after the last major earthquake leveled the city. "Physically and geologically what happened is exactly what we thought would happen," seismologist James Jackson, a Cambridge professor, told NBC News. "It was sort of a nightmare waiting to happen." He did say, though, that he didn't expect a quake like Saturday's magnitude-7.8 one to hit so soon, killing thousands and causing massive destruction.

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