The search for survivors of Nepal’s
deadly earthquake entered its third day as countries rushed aid to one
of Asia’s poorest economies and international relief agencies warned of
the rising risk of water-borne disease.
Rescue team member works to dig out the trapped body of a woman from a collapsed house in Bhaktapur, April 26, 2015.
Dozens of aftershocks -- including one
that reached a magnitude of 6.7 -- hindered rescue efforts with around
50 tremors logged since Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake, adding to
the chaos as panicked residents avoid returning to damaged homes. The
quake killed more than 2,300 people and injured as many as 5,000, with
the toll still rising.
Rain has slowed power restoration and
other relief efforts, including the clearing away of corpses. The main
quake that struck shortly before noon on Saturday triggered avalanches
on Mount Everest, killing at least 19 foreign climbers including a
Google Inc. product manager.
“Time is of the essence for the search
and rescue operations,” United Nations under secretary-general for
humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos said in a statement. Many people have
slept in the open for two nights and require food, water and emergency
shelter, while at least 940,000 children live in areas severely affected
by the earthquake, the UN said.
The International Monetary Fund,
humanitarian groups and governments from China to India to Israel rushed
to provide assistance to Nepal, one of Asia’s poorest countries. While
the temblor also downed buildings and took lives in neighboring India,
Tibet and China, it was Nepal that suffered the brunt.
Cholera fears
“We need the ability to bring clean
water to the people that need it most, in a place where cholera is
endemic,” Chris Skopec, a senior director of emergency preparedness at
the International Medical Corps, a nonprofit relief agency, said on CBS
television’s “Face the Nation” program on Sunday.
The U.S. Geological Survey initially
estimated economic losses to Nepal from the quake at 9 percent to 50
percent of gross domestic product, with a best guess of 35 percent.
Tourism is a key economic driver for
Nepal, which has a gross domestic product that is smaller than any of
the 50 U.S. states. Its 28 million people have the lowest spending power
of any Asian country apart from Afghanistan, IMF statistics show.
At Mount Everest, many climbers remain
stranded in two camps above the base camp, said Zimba Zangbu Sherpa, a
former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. The injured
and survivors are being airlifted from the base camp to Kathmandu,
according to Ang Tshering Sherpa, the association’s current president.
Rain forecast
Widespread rains are forecast to hit
Nepal over the next 24 hours, threatening to further hinder relief
efforts, the India Meteorological Department said on Sunday. It warned
citizens to be beware of possible landslides.
“People will be terrified to be indoors.
It means then that people will be exposed the the elements,” Orla Fagan
of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on
“Face the Nation” from Bangkok.
Damage to Nepal’s water and sewage
systems raises the possibility of water-borne diseases, Fagan said. “At
this stage we’re talking about really life-saving response.”
Neighboring India will rush more relief
and rescue personnel to Nepal and increase supplies of medicine and food
for the quake affected, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar told reporters
in New Delhi on Sunday. The country will also set up medical camps along
its border with Nepal, he said.
The Japanese government sent a rescue
team while the U.K. dispatched more than 60 search and rescue and
medical experts. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. would
provide $1 million in aid while USAID was readying a disaster response
team alongside an urban search and rescue team.
Gear tossed
A website backed by the International
Committee of the Red Cross listed hundreds of foreign tourists in Nepal
who remained missing. Google said it had started a “person finder” tool
to help track people missing in the earthquake, and would commit $1
million to its response.
Daniel Fredinburg, an executive with
Google’s privacy team and self-described “adventurer/engineer,” died of a
head injury on Mount Everest, his sister wrote on the social media site
Instagram.
“Some duffels from expedition members
were tossed for more than a football field’s length. Expedition boots,
dining tent frames, and ice axes were tossed far across the glacier
too,” U.S. climber Jon Kedrowski wrote on his blog Sunday about the
mayhem at basecamp.
Hundreds of people attempt to reach
Everest’s summit each year, typically paying a minimum of $30,000 per
person and often far more for the privilege, according to an estimate by
Outside magazine. The rising numbers of climbers has drawn complaints
about overcrowding, littering and heightened danger. April is a peak
month for climbing.
Weak structures
Many Nepalese live in unreinforced brick
masonry structures. The country’s shoddy building standards and lack of
preparedness for a major earthquake were the subjects of an
international conference in Kathmandu earlier this month.
Television images showed rescuers
pulling out people who were trapped under the 19th century Dharahara
Tower, a nine-story structure in Kathmandu that collapsed.
“It was so powerful and the entire house
was shaking, so we got out,” said Sila Gurung, 28, who lives in a
three-story home with her mother in Kathmandu’s Nakhipot district, close
to the popular tourist site Patan Durbar Square. “Everyone is very
scared, and no one knows when it will be safe to go back home.”
The Himalayan region is one of the
world’s most active seismic zones as the Indian subcontinent pushes
north into the central Asia tectonic plate. The 1934 earthquake in
Nepal, just west of Sikkim, killed more than 16,000 people. A 2005 quake
in Kashmir killed more than 70,000 in Pakistan.
Source: Bloomberg
Post a Comment Blogger Facebook