This post is part of a series called 2015 Nepal Earthquake Journals Kathmandu, Nepal – April 29, 2015 10:35 am Our assessment team in Nepal so far is me, Sandeep and Manis. Sandeep Shah is from our Miyamoto India office and Manis is our Nepalese structural engineer partner.  He ran one of the largest companies with 30 people in Kathmandu. Manis drives a little red Honda through the city.  The town is empty and all the stores are closed with not much action.  The apartments above the stores are all vacant.  The population essentially fled the town for fear of…

This post is part of a series called 2015 Nepal Earthquake Journals KATHMANDU, Nepal–After 30 hours of flight over Afghanistan and Iran, my plane was put on hold over Kathmandu airport. I was sitting next to a BBC producer and she told me she’s been in the air for the past three days trying to get to here. She was turned back twice because the airport was shut down. I met up with Sandeep Shah, who heads our India office, at the crowded airport, where international rescue crews and police units gathered everywhere making plans. I told everyone on our…

This post is part of a series called Miyamoto in Haiti Jon Buckley, a 32-year-old project engineer in our San Diego office, used his vacation and paid his own way to volunteer in Haiti for the firm’s nonprofit, Miyamoto Global Disaster Relief.  Read his guest journal about his adventures – like eating BBQ goat, learning a few phrases in French and Creole and seeing the damage from a major earthquake for the first time in person. The highlight, though, was working on Miyamoto Relief’s newest project, the retrofit of a dangerous, 4,000-student school in the heart of Port-au-Prince. February 2,…

This post is part of a series called Miyamoto in Haiti The community also had an interesting reaction to the Miyamoto banner that was installed at the entrance of the Lycee: normally, people in Cite Soleil do not appreciate signs and banners with donor logos because they are perceived as disempowering, as taking ownership away from the neighborhood. But the community appeared to appreciate this banner because instead of NGO logos on the banner, there were the logos of Haitian companies who were willing to put their name and brand on a project from Cite Soleil. There has been a…

With this recent earthquake in Chiang Rai, there is heightened concern regarding the community’s seismic resiliency.  Whether a community leader, building owner or resident of the city of Chiang Rai, all stakeholders have a vested interest in mitigating the seismic risk facing the community, the city and the country.…

This post is part of a series called 2014 Liberia Earthquake Journals MONROVIA, Liberia–It’s 2:30 pm and the hot African sun bears down on us. Our plane is scheduled later today, but for now I face the blowing sea smell of the wind from the Atlantic Ocean. The beach is desolate, but absolutely wild and beautiful. It’s a pure honey brown sand beach in Buchanan in the county of Grand Bassa. My bare feet are in the sand with my business pants rolled up. I removed my tie hours ago.  These things make sense in northern European weather. Not here.…