Nature Geoscience 6, 71–76 (2013); published online 16 December 2012; corrected after print 15 January 2013.

In the version of this Article originally published, in the last paragraph under the heading 'Rupture length and return time of M>8 events in Nepal' the third sentence should have read: “Damage caused by focused SmS seismic phase arrivals21 and widespread liquefaction diverted attention to the Ganges Plain”. This has been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.