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April 28, 2015

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Aid from many countries but more needed

SHELTER, fuel, food, medicine, power, news, workers — Nepal’s earthquake-hit capital was short of everything yesterday as its people searched for lost loved ones, sorted through rubble for their belongings and struggled to provide for their families’ needs.

In much of the countryside, it was worse, though how much worse was only beginning to become apparent.

By the afternoon, the death toll from Saturday’s 7.9-magnitude earthquake had climbed to more than 4,000, and reports in from remote areas suggesting it would rise significantly.

A senior interior ministry official said it could be as high as 5,000, the worst such disaster in Nepal since 1934, when 8,500 people were killed.

Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district, where the quake was centered, said he was in desperate need of help.

“There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I’ve had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed,” he said.

Aid group World Vision said its staff members were able to reach Gorkha, but gathering information from the villages remained a challenge. Even when roads are clear, the group said, some remote areas can be three days’ walk from Gorkha’s main disaster center.

Some roads and trails have been blocked by landslides, the group told reporters by e-mail. “In those villages that have been reached, the immediate needs are great including the need for search and rescue, food items, blankets and tarps, and medical treatment.”

Timalsina said 223 people had been confirmed dead in Gorkha but he presumed “the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured.”

He said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, the clearly exhausted army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.

“We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue,” he said. “We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives.”

The earthquake spread horror from Kathmandu to small villages and to the slopes of Mount Everest, triggering an avalanche that buried part of base camp.

The base camp had been packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts.

Aid is coming from more than a dozen countries and many charities, but Lila Mani Poudyal, the government’s chief secretary and the rescue coordinator, said Nepal needed much more.

He said the recovery was also being slowed because many workers — water tanker drivers, electricity company employees and laborers needed to clear debris — “are all gone to their families and staying with them, refusing to work.”

“We are appealing for tents, dry goods, blankets, mattresses, and 80 different medicines that the health department is seeking that we desperately need now,” Poudyal told reporters. “We don’t have the helicopters that we need or the expertise to rescue the people trapped.”

As people are pulled from the wreckage, he noted, even more help is needed.

“Now we especially need orthopedic doctors, nerve specialists, anesthetists, surgeons and paramedics,” he said. “We are appealing to foreign governments to send these specialized teams.”

More than 7,500 people were injured in the quake, he said, estimating that tens of thousands of people had been left homeless.

“We have been under severe stress and pressure, and have not been able to reach the people who need help on time,” he said.

The number of people killed in the devastating earthquake rose to 4,010, the country’s disaster agency said yesterday. The dead did not include the 18 people killed in the avalanche. Another 61 people were killed in neighboring India, and China reported 25 people dead in Tibet.

Families fearful of aftershocks

Well over 1,000 of the victims were in Kathmandu, where an eerie calm prevailed yesterday.

Tens of thousands of families slept outdoors for a second night, fearful of aftershocks that have not ceased. Camped in parks, open squares and a golf course, they cuddled children or pets against chilly Himalayan nighttime temperatures.

They woke to the sound of dogs yelping and jackhammers. As the dawn light crawled across toppled building sites, volunteers and rescue workers carefully shifted broken concrete slabs and crumbled bricks mixed together with humble household items — pots and pans; a purple notebook decorated with butterflies; a framed poster of a bodybuilder; so many shoes.

“It’s overwhelming. It’s too much to think about,” said 55-year-old Bijay Nakarmi, mourning his parents, whose bodies were recovered from the rubble of what once was a three-story building.

He could tell how they died from their injuries. His mother was electrocuted by a live wire on the rooftop. His father was cut down by falling beams on the staircase. He had last seen them a few days earlier — on Nepal’s Mothers’ Day — for a cheerful family meal.

“I have their bodies by the river. They are resting until relatives can come to the funeral,” Nakarmi said as workers continued searching for another five people buried underneath the debris.

Kathmandu district chief administrator Ek Narayan Aryal said tents and water were being handed out at 10 locations in the capital, but that aftershocks were leaving everyone jittery. The largest, on Sunday, was magnitude 6.7.




 

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