Relief efforts hampered as Nepal hit by repeated aftershocks

Thousands of people in Kathmandu squat on streets as aftershocks leave them in fear

A growing sense of despair spread through Kathmandu yesterday as the devastated Nepali capital was convulsed by aftershocks that sent residents screaming into the streets, where they were pelted by heavy rain. A day after an earthquake killed more than 2,400 people and injured about 5,900, residents grew frantic and the government, overwhelmed by the challenge facing the country, struggled to provide relief or much hope.

Streets in parts of this city of about 1.2 million were impassable as tens of thousands of people took up residence there. It was a strategy endorsed by the government.

Prime minister Sushil Koirala, who was attending a conference in Indonesia when the quake struck, had rushed back to Kathmandu and was to speak in a televised address yesterday. But the speech was delayed, as some relief efforts have been, by strong tremors that continue to rock Nepal.

The difficult situation in much of the capital, where safe shelters are scarce, was made worse when rains began to pour down on the huddled masses. It is increasingly evident that Nepali authorities are ill-equipped to rescue those trapped and would have trouble maintaining adequate supplies of water, electricity and food.

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Absent police

“In my neighbourhood, the police are conspicuous by their absence,” said Sridhar Khatri of the South Asia Centre for Policy Studies in Kathmandu. “There is not even a show of force to deter vandalism, which some reports say is on the rise.”

The government began setting up 16 relief stations across Kathmandu and the rest of the country while rescue operations continued. The relief stations are expected to ease distribution of water, food and medicine, said Laxmi Prasad Dhakal, a spokesman at the ministry of home affairs.

Electricity has been intermittent at best in Kathmandu, and absent in other parts of Nepal, but that is not wholly unusual in a country where nighttime blackouts are routine. Many hotels, commercial buildings and wealthy homes in the capital have their own generators. But nearly all of the country's petrol and diesel supplies are brought in from India, and with traffic reduced to a crawl along major highways, those supplies could dwindle quickly. Some gas stations in Kathmandu have already run dry; others are rationing their remaining supplies.

Thousands of Kathmandu’s residents squatted on streets throughout the city either because their homes were destroyed or because continued aftershocks, including one of magnitude 6.7, left them too afraid to go inside. Other residents camped out in schools, school playgrounds and government offices.

Terrified screams

The government announced that schools would remain closed for at least five days, and it pleaded with government workers to help in local rescue efforts in place of their usual jobs. Stephen Groves, who lives in Kathmandu, said he was inspecting a building for cracks shortly after noon yesterday when the biggest of many aftershocks hit, leading to terrified screams from those nearby.

“The whole time I was thinking if the building next to me was going to come down on top of me,” Groves said in an email. “People here are in a panic, and every aftershock contributes to that. They are not going indoors, they are staying in the roads and in open areas. Many are searching for family members.”

Groves said he went to a hospital in the capital on Saturday, where hordes of people were lying on the ground outside the building, many with intravenous drips hooked up to their arms. Large parts of the country are unreachable by phone.

On Mount Everest, helicopter rescue operations began yesterday morning to bring wounded climbers down off the mountain, where at least 18 climbers were killed and another 41 injured, making the earthquake the deadliest event in the mountain’s history.

Aftershocks and small avalanches throughout yesterday continued to plague the nearly 800 people staying at the mountain base camp and at higher elevation camps.

After posting on Twitter that he was “fairly safe but stuck” at the base camp, a climber, Jim Davidson, then provided a more alarming update from Camp 1, which is above the base camp. “Just had our biggest aftershock yet here at C1 on Everest. Smaller than original quake but glacier shook & avalanches,” he said.

Nepal will require significant help. The country’s political discord is likely to hamper rescue and rebuilding efforts. The government has been barely functional for more than a decade, with politicians of just about every stripe fighting over the scraps of the increasingly desperate economy.

Civil war

A 10-year civil war between Maoist parties and the government ended in 2006, but the resulting constituent assembly spent four years trying to write a constitution without success. Paralysis ensued until elections in November 2013 led to the unexpected rout of the previously dominant Maoists.

Nepal’s people had already become exhausted with the political paralysis, but those feelings could turn explosive if relief and rescue efforts fail in the coming weeks, analysts said.

The fear of such an outcome could spur an intense international relief effort, as an odd collection of countries – including China, India and the United States – were already co-operating on pushing Nepal's politicians toward compromise.