Rescuers dug with their bare hands
and bodies piled up in Nepal on Sunday after an earthquake devastated
the heavily crowded Kathmandu Valley, killing more than 2,200 people,
and triggered a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.
A man cries as he walks on the street while passing through a damaged statue of Lord Buddha a day after an earthquake in Bhaktapur, Nepal April 26, 2015.
A big aftershock between Kathmandu and
Everest unleashed more avalanches in the Himalayas. In the capital,
hospital workers stretchered patients out onto the street to treat them
as it was too dangerous to keep them indoors.
"Another one, we have an aftershock
right now. Oh shit!" said Indian climber Arjun Vajpai over the phone
from Makalu base camp near Everest. "Avalanche!" he shouted. Screams and
the roar of crashing snow could be heard over the line as he spoke.
The tremor, measured at 6.7, was the
most powerful since Saturday's 7.9 quake - itself the strongest since
Nepal's worst earthquake disaster of 1934 that killed 8,500 people.
The aftershock rocked buildings in the Indian capital New Delhi and halted the city metro.
"There is no way one can forecast the
intensity of aftershocks so people need to be alert for the next few
days," said L.S. Rathore, chief of India's state-run weather office.
In Everest's worst disaster, the bodies
of 17 climbers were recovered from the mountain on Sunday after being
caught in avalanches. A plane carrying the first 15 injured climbers
landed in Kathmandu at around noon local time.
"There is a lot of confusion on the
mountain. The toll will rise," said Gelu Sherpa, one of the walking
wounded among the first 15 injured climbers flown to Kathmandu. "Tents
have been blown away," said Sherpa, his head in bandages.
Government overwhelmed
With Nepal's government overwhelmed by
the scale of the disaster, India flew in medical supplies and relief
crews, while China sent in a 60-strong emergency team. Relief agencies
said hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley were overflowing and running out
of medical supplies.
Army officer Santosh Nepal and a group
of rescuers worked all night to open a passage into a collapsed building
in Kathmandu. They had to use pick axes because bulldozers could not
get through the ancient city's narrow streets.
"We believe there are still people
trapped inside," he told Reuters, pointing at concrete debris and
twisted reinforcement rods where a three-storey residential building
once stood.
Among the capital's landmarks destroyed
in the earthquake was the 60-metre (200-foot) Dharahara Tower, built in
1832 for the queen of Nepal, with a viewing balcony that had been open
to visitors for the last 10 years.
A jagged stump was all that was left of
the lighthouse-like structure. As bodies were pulled from the ruins on
Saturday, a policeman said up to 200 people had been trapped inside.
Bodies were still arriving on Sunday at
one hospital in Kathmandu, where police officer Sudan Shreshtha said his
team had brought 166 corpses overnight.
"I am tired and exhausted, but I have to
work and have the strength," Shreshtha told Reuters as an ambulance
brought three more victims to the Tribhuvan University Teaching
Hospital.
Bodies were heaped in a dark room, some
covered with cloth, some not. A boy aged about seven had his face half
missing and his stomach bloated like a football. The stench of death was
overpowering.
Outside, a 30-year-old woman who had
been widowed wailed: "Oh Lord, oh God, why did you take him alone? Take
me along with him also."
"Both private and government hospitals
have run out of space and are treating patients outside, in the open,"
said Nepal's envoy to India, Deep Kumar Upadhyay. Prime Minister Sushil
Koirala is back from abroad and will soon address the country.
Need a decision
Save the Children's Peter Olyle said
hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley were running out of storage room for
bodies and emergency supplies. "There is a need for a government
decision on bringing in kits from the military," he said from Kathmandu.
Some buildings in Kathmandu toppled like
houses of cards, others leaned at precarious angles, and partial
collapses exposed living rooms and furniture in place and belongings
stacked on shelves.
Rescuers, some wearing face masks to
keep out the dust, scrambled over mounds of splintered timber and broken
bricks in the hope of finding survivors. Some used their bare hands to
fill small white buckets with dirt and rock.
Thousands of people spent the night outside in chilly temperatures and patchy rain, too afraid to return to their damaged homes.
On Sunday, survivors wandered the
streets clutching bed rolls and blankets, while others sat in the street
cradling their children, surrounded by a few plastic bags of
belongings.
The 7.9 magnitude quake struck at midday
on Saturday at a busy time of year for the tourism-reliant country's
trekking and climbing season, with an estimated 300,000 foreign tourists
in the country, home to many World Heritage sites.
Police put the death toll in Nepal at
2,152, with 5,463 hurt. At least 700 were killed in the capital, a city
of about 1 million people where many homes are old, poorly built and
packed close together.
Some 49 people were reported killed in
neighbouring India, which has sent military aircraft to Nepal with
medical equipment and relief teams. It also said it had dispatched 285
members of its National Disaster Response Force.
In Tibet, the death toll climbed to 17,
according to a tweet from China's state news agency, Xinhua. Four people
were killed in Bangladesh.
Pakistan's military is sending four
C-130 aircraft with a 30-bed hospital, search and rescue teams and
relief supplies, the army said.
Worst everest disaster
There were nearly 1,000 climbers and
sherpas on Everest when the first avalanche struck, claiming the highest
toll of any disaster on the world's highest mountain.
Climber photographs on social media
sites showed tents and other structures at Everest base camp flattened
by rocks and snow. The first reported photo of the avalanche showed a
monster "cloud-like" mass of snow and rock descending down the mountain.
Helicopters were able to fly in on
Sunday morning as clouds lifted to evacuate the injured to a lower
altitude, from where they were being flown to Kathmandu.
"All badly injured heli evacuated," Romanian climber Alex Gavan tweeted from base camp. "Caring for those needing. Want sleep."
Another 100 climbers higher up Everest
at camps 1 and 2, were safe but their way back down the mountain was
blocked by damage to the treacherous Khumbu icefalls, scene of an
avalanche that killed 16 climbers last year. Helicopters had started to
shuttle them to base camp, Gavan reported.
The main earthquake, centred 50 miles (80 km) east of the second city, Pokhara, was all the more destructive for being shallow.
Source: Reuters
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