Nepal earthquake: thousands in need of shelter in country little able to cope
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Version 0 of 1. The three sisters were doing what many children do at the weekend in south Asia: playing cricket. In the narrow alley outside their four-storey home, Kausis, Binu and Jyothi, aged eight, 10 and 12, sent an old rubber ball bouncing off the faded brick wallsof the ageing houses of Bhaktapur, a World Heritage site known for its ancient architectural treasures that lies around 8 miles (13km) from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. “They were laughing, having fun, just as usual. I saw them as I stepped out of our house and set off for the shops,” Radeshan Sanju, their uncle, said on Sunday. Sanju remembered seeing the girls at 11.41am on Saturday. He had not even reached the small grocers at the end of the alley before the ground began to shudder and the houses began to fall. His wife, a 28-year-old teacher, disappeared in the huge pile of rubble and dust. Their 20-month-old son had been playing on the roof of the building. There was no sign of the three girls. “I came running, running,” Sanju said, slowly shaking his head. A series of strong aftershocks continued to shake the capital on Sunday, hampering rescue efforts and forcing residents in the city of 2.5m people out on to the streets, away from the buildings that had crumbled into dust the previous day. The death toll in Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake is close to 2,500, with victims in Bangladesh, India and Tibet, as well as on Mount Everest, where it triggered avalanches that hit base camp, killing at least 17 people. More than 6,300 people across the region are believed to have been injured, though the full extent of the destruction, and the deaths, is still yet to be discovered. In Kavre district alone, 15 miles (25km) east of Kathmandu, officials said 140 had been killed, and more than 600 injured were being treated in its hospitals. Up to 20,000 houses have been destroyed. Thousands are living in open spaces demanding shelter and water, the chief local administrator, Sudarshan Dhakal, said. There was still almost no information from the Nepalese region feared to have been worst hit, the upland valleys and mountains of Gorkha, which was closest to the epicentre. The chief bureaucrat of Gorkha district said two helicopters had been deployed for rescues, with 223 people confirmed dead. This was certain to rise, however, amid fears that entire villages may have been destroyed. “Fifty per cent of the houses, schools have been collapsed,” he told the Guardian by telephone last night. The last major earthquake came in 1988, but another had long been expected. “I’d heard about the last one of course. The old people talk about it. How the ground span and that’s what destroyed the buildings. So I half expected this,” said Tulashi Suwal, whose home in Bhaktapur had been badly damaged. Few of the newer buildings in Nepal’s rapidly expanding capital appeared to have been damaged. But the older buildings, built of wood and brick, stood little chance. In the former royal city of Bhaktapur, dozens of traditional temples have been reduced to dirt and palaces have lost entire wings. Damage to the famous Unesco-listed durbar squares of the city has been extensive; the Dharahara tower, one of Nepal’s most famous landmarks, was reduced to rubble, killing up to 180 people and leaving up to 200 people trapped inside. Masonry lay scatted across the stone paving. An ornate dragon’s head lay next to a chipped effigy of a god. Rescuers used their bare hands, with no protective gear or heat detectors, in their optimistic search for survivors. The narrow alleys would stop cranes, earthmovers or diggers reaching most of the houses that have collapsed, even if the aftershocks hadn’t scared workers out of even trying, said Shyam Adhikari, the local police chief. “Anyway, there’s not much point. There are some entire families buried. We know because no one reported them missing. No one is alive under the rubble,” he told The Guardian. In a nearby school, hundreds of homeless survivors gathered. Adihkahi estimated that 5,000 houses had been destroyed in Bhaktapur alone, meaning at least 30,000 or 40,000 people without homes. Some will be able to find shelter with relatives in already overcrowded tenements. Others are lost. “We have nowhere to go now. We are here only. We have some vegetables and some rice but that’s all,” said Purana Maya, a housewife and mother of two teenage daughters. Many are already angry at authorities, which have a reputation for graft and inefficiency. “We have not seen a single official. We had to break the locks ourselves to get into the school. And if they get any money for relief, we’ll be lucky if we see any of it after they’ve had their noses in the trough,” said Maya, 49. The truth, however, may be that Nepali officials have simply been overwhelmed. The country is one of the poorest in Asia and has extremely limited ability to cope with any emergency, let alone a humanitarian disaster on this scale. ”We are lacking proper resources and equipments to deal with the rescue, we are trying our best, though,” Nepal Police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam said. “We don’t have enough cranes to dig out rapidly in all places – so it’s taking time to recover the buried.” At noon, Mukesh Kafle, the head of the Nepal Electricity Authority, said power had been restored fully to main government offices, the airport and hospitals in the capital. By evening, however, much of Kathmandu had been plunged back into darkness as aftershocks caused new damage. I am 65 and I have never experienced anything like this. We have no tent, nothing and it is cold and windy Aid is now arriving. An Indian team is already in Bhaktapur and countries across the world, including the UK, are sending relief. With Kathmandu airport reopened, the first aid flights have begun delivering aid supplies. The first countries to respond were Nepal’s neighbours, India, China and Pakistan, all of which have been jockeying for influence over the landlocked nation. Last night, as darkness and a chill rain fell, hundreds of thousands prepared for a night in the open. “It is horrible, really horrible. I am still terrified. I am 65 and I have never experienced anything like this. We have no tent, nothing and it is cold and windy,” said Sushil Sharma, a retired civil servant in the Lalitpur neighbourhood of Kathmandu, who was bedding down with his wife, daughter and grandchildren outside his tenement block. “We are feeling a bit better than last night but still it is very difficult. We have courage,” Sharma said. Assistance arrived fast enough to save some people. Sanju was unable to reach his three cricket-playing nieces, but he and a group of policemen were able to pull his toddler son from the rubble within minutes. The boy had fallen 10m or more and has two badly broken legs but will at least live, doctors say. He was being treated on a roadside outside a local private clinic. Around him were women suffering pelvic fractures, men with multiple fractures and bleeding adolescents, all lying on thin mattresses or blankets on the ground. Flies hummed above as exhausted medical staff moved slowly among the injured. Dr Pramod Kunal, an orthopaedic surgeon, treated 50 people between 8am and 3pm. Six arrived dead on arrival in makeshift ambulances, cars or rickshaws, or were simply carried. “We have 100 beds. They are all full. Now we are running out of supplies. I’ve no more plaster for casts or bandages,” Kunal said. As for Sanju’s wife, Soba, who also disappeared under the rubble, she too survived, just. Earthquake training at the school where she works had taught her to seek a doorway as the building collapsed around her. She found herself caught in a small space, trapped against a concrete wall. “I shouted but they didn’t hear me. I heard my child crying, then nothing more. In fact, he had been rescued but I though he had died. Finally I found a water drum and banged it and they heard. After three hours I knew I wouldn’t die and my child had been saved,” she said. Her three nieces and their mother were not so fortunate. Their father has since disappeared, last seen, deranged by grief, shouting that his wife and daughters were calling to him and that he had to join them. No one knows where he is. |