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Hope for finding more quake survivors fades in Nepal

The Columbian
Published: April 28, 2015, 5:00pm

KATMANDU, Nepal – Hope of finding survivors in rubble was fading fast Wednesday as the death toll from last weekend’s earthquake in Nepal surpassed 5,000. But after days of complaints about the shortage of aid, a somewhat stronger presence of foreign search and rescue teams and assistance convoys was evident in the capital and outlying districts.

A logjam of airplane traffic and passengers began to clear at Katmandu’s airport, where authorities said they had picked up 1.5 tons of trash from the overrun facility. Banks, restaurants and even souvenir shops began to reopen in the capital.

Thousands of people, though, continued to look for ways out of the Katmandu Valley, hitching rides on crowded buses and taxis. Many were returning home to remote villages to assess the impact of the disaster. State-run Radio Nepal said 200,000 people had already left the valley as of late Tuesday and another 200,000 may leave in the coming days.

That exodus could crimp the ability of private businesses and government offices to function. Government authorities ordered civil servants to return to work Thursday, though schools and many other institutions remained closed indefinitely.

Indian, Russian, French, Chinese and Nepali search and rescue teams were working across the capital, trying to find survivors amid collapsed buildings. But four days after the magnitude 7.8 quake, chances of finding anyone alive were slim.

As the sun began to set, Deepak Damai stood on the edge of the Sobhavagbati Bridge in Katmandu, clutching a photo of his 5-year-old son and explaining his situation to a reporter from an Indian TV station. The boy and Damai’s wife were in their apartment on the third floor of seven-story building that had collapsed at the edge of the Shobha Baghwati river.

Damai, who had been working in Dubai at the time of the quake, flew home Monday to search for his wife and son. He watched with despair as Nepali rescue workers drilled through the layers of concrete, pulling out four bodies. “Those people also lived on the third floor,” he said, his lip trembling.

Rescue workers had dug out 27 bodies so far and still had three more levels to drill through. A police officer said they expected to find a large number of bodies on the lowest level, which had housed an athletic club.

About half a mile away, Indian, Russian and Nepali teams were using dogs and listening devices to try to locate survivors from three collapsed buildings, including a church where 50 people had been worshiping at the time of the quake.

But Subrate Charkrabortui, an Indian physician on the scene, was downbeat. One body had been pulled out Wednesday, he said.

“Everyone is sincere about helping,” he said. “The Nepalese army is doing a lot, but they lack proper equipment. We could do much more if we had better equipment, but it is difficult to airlift all the heavy equipment necessary to lift buildings like this.”

Still, there was at least one miraculous story: A French rescue team pulled a 27-year-old man from a collapsed three-story hotel, the Associated Press reported.

“I had some hope but by yesterday I’d given up. My nails went all white and my lips cracked. … I was sure no one was coming for me. I was certain I was going to die,” he said from his hospital bed.

The leader of Nepal’s Red Cross agreed with critics that the response was far from ideal.

“The total operation is inefficient,” admitted Dev Ratna Dhakhwa, the agency’s secretary-general, as he surveyed the emergency response tent headquarters in the capital, where volunteers were checking in from around the world before deploying Wednesday.

“There are many places we have not even been able to reach because it is so remote,” he said, such as northern Gorkha, near the epicenter. “People are really suffering there. We are asking our district chapter to go there.”

The Nepalese government said it had dispatched eight helicopters to the Gorkha area to rescue those most severely wounded.

The U.N. said Wednesday the disaster has affected 8.1 million people – more than a fourth of Nepal’s population of 27.8 million – and that 1.4 million needed food assistance.

“Under normal circumstances, a government would have the capacity to respond to maybe 10, or 20, or 30,000 people in need. But if you’re looking at 8 million as we are here, you need a bit of time to scale everything up,” Geoff Pinnock, a World Food Program emergencies officer, told the Associated Press from an aid staging area about 16 miles from Gorkha.

But the problem was not only in isolated villages, Dhakhwa said. “Even in accessible places here, we are not in a position to say we have reached everyone. . The magnitude is so great,” he said, gesturing to those seated around him and adding, “We, the service providers, are still out of our homes.”

The capital was in what he called the “panic phase” of recovery, with about 700,000 people displaced. Residents had initially been advised to return home after 72 hours, and the aftershocks had apparently stopped, but many were still afraid to sleep inside.

“We have nearly a quarter million people still sleeping in the streets,” Dhakhwa said.

That has created overwhelming demand for tarps that the country’s Red Cross can’t meet, even with more than $5 million in immediate emergency aid from the International Red Cross. Dhakhwa said they are trying to obtain 100,000 tarps, which will be rationed: one for every two families, about 20 people each.

The Red Cross also has distributed emergency water filtration kits to serve about 20,000 people in anticipation of the next phase of the recovery, when temporary camps become more permanent installations for those whose homes have been destroyed.

Demand will then shift from tarps to tents, which are also in short supply. Aid workers are also distributing water purification tablets and trying to educate residents about public health risks.

“Sanitation has become a big problem, because people are in the streets and not in a position to get the right kind of toilet,” Dhakhwa said.

Meanwhile, a Red Cross team was still searching Wednesday for the bodies of several children missing since the quake in an area just outside the capital.

Ramila Maharjan’s grandfather was killed when he became trapped by debris at their home outside the capital, and the family was still planning to sleep outside Wednesday.

Maharjan, 27, who works at a mall in Dubai as a clerk in a Sephora cosmetics shop, was urged by relatives to stay away, but flew home Wednesday to inspect the house.

“I have to go check,” she said as she left the crowded terminal. “I don’t want them to be alone in this critical situation.”

Saurabh Goal, 27, of Delhi, was headed in the opposite direction Wednesday, finally leaving after his flight was repeatedly delayed and he was forced to camp in a makeshift tent in the airport traffic circle along with a dozen other tourists.

He complained of food shortages, inflated black market prices for most other supplies and surly police. “I’m really disheartened. These Nepalis know tourists are important to them – they should behave properly,” the software engineer said.

But his friend Yogesh Mhatre, 30, a restaurant consultant, was more sympathetic. “At least have compassion in a difficult situation,” he said.

Paul Dazong and his wife also have been camped at the airport for days after traveling from the Netherlands for a trek. “We are lucky,” he said as they sat on a deflated rubber mattress spread in the grass, their backs against a luggage cart.

They had just finished their trek when the quake struck, and they were evacuated by plane to the capital with victims from an avalanche at the Everest base camp, including a Japanese woman they said later died.

At the airport, they have watched international aid arrive, including scores of German and Japanese search and rescue teams Wednesday. Indian helicopters passed overhead, ferrying the wounded to a nearby military hospital.

“Nepal is a poor country and was not prepared for the damage,” Dazong said. “They need to be better prepared.”

Ganandra Misrah, 37, was taking the last bus of the night from a parking lot in central Katmandu back to his hometown in eastern Nepal with his family after spending three days in a tent camp.

“We are not safe here. All of the people need more buses to leave,” he said as he prepared to depart the capital.

Misrah said he watched the tent camp become progressively filthier and worried about his two children, ages 6 and 3.

“Refuse is here and there, bottles on the ground, a very dirty environment. That’s why I worried about my children, about swine flu, and other communicable diseases,” he said. “So we are leaving.”

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