Hundreds of thousands of Nepalis
spent another night in the open Monday after a
massive quake which killed more
than 4,000, as officials warned the final toll could yet rise sharply once
rescuers reach cut-off areas.
With fears rising of food and water
shortages, Nepalis were rushing to stores and petrol stations to stock up on
essential supplies in the capital Kathmandu, left devastated by Saturday’s
7.8-magnitude quake.
Officials say more than 4,100 people
are now known to have died, including 4,010 in Nepal — making it the
quake-prone Himalayan nation’s deadliest disaster in more than 80 years.
More than 90 people have been killed
in neighbouring India and China while a further 7,500 people were injured in
Nepal.
But senior disaster management
official Rameshwor Dangal said the toll in Nepal could jump once rescuers
discovered the full extent of devastation in villages.
“Rescue operations are underway, and
in many places where buildings have collapsed there might be people trapped,”
Dangal, the home ministry’s national disaster management chief, told AFP.
“We are also in the process of
getting information from villages, and these will add to the death toll.”
Families who work in Kathmandu were
packing onto buses, some even sitting on the roofs, leaving the city, many for
their home villages to determine the damage there.
Mothers clutching children and men
hauling bags were seen bargaining with drivers of the many buses clogging the
roads out of the capital.
The exodus came as international
rescue teams with sniffer dogs raced to find survivors buried in rubble, and
teams equipped with heavy cutting gear and relief supplies landed at the
nation’s only international airport.
Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for
the UN’s World Food Programme, told AFP the agency would launch a “large,
massive operation” with the first plane carrying rations set to arrive on Tuesday.
Pledging $10 million in relief to
help the victims, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he had been shocked by
the “gut-wrenching” images of the death and destruction.
– Hunkered in tent camps –
Across the capital, Nepalis were
hunkered down for the night in makeshift tents in parks and other open spaces,
many having lost their houses and others too terrified to return home after
several powerful aftershocks.
“This is a nightmare. Why don’t
these aftershocks stop?” asked 70-year-old Sanu Ranjitkar, clutching her dog
and with an oxygen mask strapped to her face as she sat under a tarpaulin.
With just plastic sheets to protect
them from the elements, many were desperate for aid and information on what to
do next.
“There is just too much fear and
confusion,” said Bijay Sreshtha, who fled to a park with his three children,
wife and mother when the quake hit.
Fears were rising of a disease
outbreak in the multitude of tent camps that have sprung up around the city.
“Right now, it is important to
prevent another disaster by taking precautions against an outbreak of diseases
among the survivors,” army official Arun Neupane told reporters.
Long queues formed outside petrol
stations while supermarkets were seeing a run on staples such as rice and
cooking oil.
A government official said tonnes of
clean water and other essential supplies were needed for survivors as well as
stepped-up search and rescue efforts outside the capital.
“We need more helicopters for our
rescue operations in rural areas,” home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal
told AFP.
“We also need supplies of essential
goods such as food and clean water to provide relief for survivors.
– Rescue on Everest –
The quake triggered an avalanche on
Mount Everest which buried part of base camp in a cascade of snow and rock,
killing at least 18 people Saturday on the world’s highest mountain.
Rescue helicopters on Monday
airlifted climbers from higher altitudes on the mountain where they were
stranded above crevasses and icefalls, after evacuating scores of seriously
injured from base camp the day before.
Hundreds of mountaineers had
gathered at Everest at the start of the annual climbing season, and the real
scale of the disaster there has been impossible to evaluate with communications
all but cut off.
Reconstruction efforts in
impoverished Nepal could cost more than $5 billion, or around 20 percent of the
country’s GDP, according to Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at
business research firm IHS.
Nearly a million children living in
affected areas are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, UNICEF said.
Much of the historic centre of
Kathmandu and Nepal’s army said crews trying to rescue those trapped in the
rubble of high-rise buildings were being hampered by a lack of specialised
equipment.
“We need more equipment that can
detect sounds and help track survivors,” Colonel Naresh Subba told reporters.
– ‘She was my everything’ –
In Kathmandu’s Balaju neighbourhood,
one father endured the agony of watching police pull the body of his daughter
from the rubble of their home after using a combination of hammers and bare
hands.
“She was my everything,” said
Dayaram Mohat as he collapsed in grief on hearing the news of his 14-year-old
daughter Prasamsah’s death.
The Nepalese rescuers were being
joined by hundreds of foreign aid workers from countries including China, India
and the United States.
Hospitals have been overwhelmed,
with morgues overflowing and medics working flat out to cope with an endless
stream of victims suffering trauma or multiple fractures.
The quake’s epicentre was around 45
miles (73 kilometres) east of the town of Pokhara, the country’s centre for
adventure sports. An AFP correspondent reported the town had been largely
unaffected and tourists were continuing their holidays.
Nepal and the rest of the Himalayas,
where the Indian and Eurasia tectonic plates collide, are particularly prone to
earthquakes.
A 6.8 magnitude quake hit eastern
Nepal in August 1988 killing 721 people, and a magnitude 8.1 quake killed
10,700 people in Nepal and India in 1934.
Breaking news: Nepal’s earth quake death rate passes 4,000
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Monday, April 27, 2015
Rating:
No comments: