Anger among survivors as food and water in short supply, while rescue teams warn they are yet to reached ‘flattened’ villages in remote regions

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This article is more than 5 years old

Nepal earthquake: death toll could reach 10,000, says PM – live updates Read more

The death toll in Nepal’s earthquake could reach 10,000, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has said, as survivors’ despair turned to anger at the government’s slow response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country, with food, water and other essentials in desperately short supply.

“The government is doing all it can for rescue and relief on a war footing,” Koirala said in an interview with Reuters. “It is a challenge and a very difficult hour for Nepal.”

The death toll in Nepal alone rose to 5,057 on Tuesday, according to the country’s Emergency Operation Centre, which said more than 10,000 people have been injured. There are warnings the full extent of the tragedy will not be known until rescue teams have reached “flattened” villages in remote regions.

Nepalese police and volunteers clear the rubble while looking for survivors at the compound of a collapsed temple in Kathmandu. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

“The death toll could go up to 10,000 because information from remote villages hit by the earthquake is yet to come in,” Koirala said.

In neighbouring India 61 people were killed and China’s official Xinhua News Agency said 25 people had died in Tibet. Eighteen others were killed in avalanches on Mount Everest.

Another avalanche hit a village in the district of Rasuwa, north of Kathmandu, on Tuesday, leaving up to 250 people missing. Ghodatabela, about a 12-hour walk from the nearest town, is along a popular trekking route, but it was not clear if the missing included trekkers.

Health workers said they feared a major health crisis was unfolding among survivors of the quake who are living in the open or in overcrowded tents with no access to sanitation or clean water.



On Tuesday helicopters crisscrossed the skies above Gorkha, close to the epicentre of Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, ferrying the injured to clinics and taking emergency supplies back to remote villages. Aid workers who had reached the region described entire villages reduced to rubble.

“In some villages, about 90% of the houses have collapsed. They’re just flattened,” said Rebecca McAteer, an American physician. Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for Gorkha, warned that people were not getting food and shelter.

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That grim assessment was supported by World Vision aid worker Matt Darvas, who reached Gorkha on Monday. “It does not seem aid is reaching here very quickly,” he said.

“Further north from here the reports are very disturbing,” he said, adding that up to 75% of the buildings in Singla may have collapsed. There has been no contact with that village since Saturday night.

In the town of Dhulikhel, the main hospital, one of only two serving the Kabre district, with a population of 380,000, was due to run out of diesel fuel for its generator at midnight on Monday.



“We are trying to get more but it’s difficult. We’ve a little bit of solar but not enough to light the operating theatres and the wards,” said Dr Deepak Shrestha.

So far, police say they have 373 confirmed deaths in Gorkha. The death toll is expected to rise, though not “into the thousands”, said local officials. However vast numbers of homes have been destroyed, leaving tens of thousands at least exposed to chilly late spring Himalayan temperatures and frequent rain.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People rest inside an Indian Air Force helicopter as they are evacuated from Trishuli Bazar to Kathmandu. Photograph: Jitendra Prakash/Reuters

Efforts to distribute aid are proceeding at an agonisingly slow pace, sparking anger among frustrated survivors. The delay stems in part from the extent of damage caused by the quake and interruptions from strong aftershocks.

“Rescue operations are underway, and in many places where buildings have collapsed there might be people trapped,” said Rameshwor Dangal, head of disaster management at Nepal’s home ministry.

“We are also in the process of getting information from villages, and these will add to the death toll.”

If the toll does reach 10,000 it would be even higher than the 8,500 killed in a massive quake in 1934 – Nepal’s worst disaster to date.

Residents whose homes were flattened or badly damaged by the quake criticised poor organisation by the Nepalese authorities, saying they had been left to fend for themselves for too long, even using their bare hands to search through the rubble for survivors.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Families in Kathmandu queue on Sunday to cremate their loved ones following the devastating earthquake

OP Singh, the head of India’s National Disaster Response Force, said finding survivors and the bodies of the dead would take time since the heavy equipment needed to clear rubble could not fit through many of Kathmandu’s narrow streets.

“You have to remove all this rubble, so that will take a lot of time ... I think it’s going to take weeks,” he told Indian TV.

Anil Giri, who was helping volunteers search for two of his friends thought to be trapped beneath collapsed buildings, said: “The government has not done anything for us. We are clearing the debris ourselves with our bare hands.”

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Officials conceded they were struggling to cope with the sheer scale of the disaster. “The big challenge is relief,” said the Nepalese government’s chief secretary, Leela Mani Paudel.

Despite reports that 90% of Nepal’s 100,000 troops are now involved in the search and rescue effort, Paudel said international help could not arrive quickly enough.

“We urge foreign countries to give us special relief materials and medical teams. We are really desperate for more foreign expertise to pull through this crisis.”

In a rare piece of positive news, mountaineers reported that all 140 climbers who had been stranded at camps high up Mount Everest have been taken to safety.



“Everest, above base camp, is now empty,” Danish climber Carsten Lillelund Pedersen posted on his Facebook page. Eighteen people were killed in avalanches unleashed by the earthquake.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mount Everest’s south base camp. Photograph: 6summitschallenge.com/Reuters

The desperate poverty of the survivors is the thread that runs through the tragedy unfolding in Nepal.

Though many had predicted an earthquake in Kathmandu would bring the newly constructed cement apartment blocks tumbling down, it was the older, brick and wood homes that, almost exclusively, were reduced to rubble. Anyone who stayed in these could not afford better.

“Outside Kathmandu it’s the rural poor. But in the city it’s the people in the older precarious housing. It’s obvious: the wealthier you are, the stronger the house you have,” said Bhaskar Gautam, a local sociologist.



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The aid situation is expected to improve as more planes packed with supplies arrive from India, China, the US, the UK, Australia, Pakistan and other countries, although that operation too is being held up by congestion at Kathmandu’s airport, and by a shortages of workers to unload cargo and vehicles to ferry supplies to where they are needed.

While the scale of the disaster is not yet fully known, aid workers said the humanitarian impact was likely to be overwhelming.

The United Nations estimates that as many as eight million of Nepal’s 28 million people have had their lives disrupted by the earthquake, adding that it was releasing US$15m from an emergency response fund to help the victims.

The UN said more than 1.4 million people need food assistance, including 750,000 who live near the quake’s epicentre in poor quality housing. Tens of thousands are thought to have been left homeless.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Temporary shelters in Kathmandu. Photograph: Cihan / Barcroft Media

As smoke from hundreds of funeral pyres filled the air in Kathmandu and the surrounding countryside, some survivors spoke of the near futility of attempting to reach anyone still alive in the rubble.



“We cannot look for missing people with a candle in our hands,” said Amarnath Prasad, 26, who was helping his best friend look for his mother. “She loved me like her son, and I think it is my duty to find her, dead or alive.”

Amid the destruction and chaos, parts of Kathmandu were coming back to life. Hawkers were selling limes and cabbage on pavements. One or two shops were open, even a bank. The city’s notorious traffic was still far from its usual level but was returning to congested normality.

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Yet thousands are still camping in open spaces, too frightened to return to their homes. Some say they will wait until 72 hours have passed, but continuing aftershocks rekindled their fear.

Many, too, were still seeking treatment for serious injuries, some waiting outside hospitals. The morgue at Bir hospital, the capital’s biggest, was overflowing, with bodies lined up outside.

There was also the fear of disease. “Now there could be communicable illnesses, diarrhoea, flu and so forth. The earthquake will have broken all the sewers and pipes so the water supply will be contaminated,” said Dr Sameer Thapa, as he looked out over a car park and garden covered in tents sheltering patients at the Tribhuvan University teaching hospital.

