Thread: Strong earthquake rocks Nepal, damages Kathmandu

Six Thai students located and safe



Six Thai students from Srinakharinwirot University who were reported to be in Nepal and on mountain climbing tour in Pokhara have been located and all were safe.
Thai embassy has already instructed them to find way to Kathmandu’s where they can board flight back to Thailand.

An embassy staff said relatives of one of the six Thai students identified as Jessada Supapitiporn said they have contacted him and were confirmed that all the six students were safe.

The relatives said they would fly to Kathmandu to bring him home.

Meanwhile Thai ambassador Vutti Vuttisan said the embassy has instructed them to find way to Kathmandu where they can board a flight back home.

But he admitted that it would take some time to reach Kathmandu as domestic airlines suspend services. The embassy is providing an alternative travel plan to the students.

He said about 40 Thais will return today from Nepal.

More here: Six Thai students located and safe - Thai PBS English News




These kids are standing in front of Durbar Square temple, in post #28, which was reduced to rubble.

International efforts to bring more aid to Nepal are being increased, as the death toll from Saturday's massive earthquake reached 3,726.

More than 6,500 were injured and thousands are living in tents after their homes were destroyed.

Dozens of people are also reported to have been killed in neighbouring China and India.

At least 200 climbers have now been rescued around Mount Everest, after the quake triggered avalanches.

Vast tent cities have sprung up in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, for those displaced or afraid to return to their homes. Thousands spent Sunday night - their second night - outside.

There are shortages of water, food and electricity, while disease is also a concern.

"We urge foreign countries to give us special relief materials and medical teams," Nepal's government Chief Secretary Leela Mani Paudel said.

China and India have sent emergency teams, along with Pakistan, which said it was dispatching four C130 transport planes carrying a 30-bed hospital. Other countries, including Britain, Australia and New Zealand are also contributing.

However, congestion at Kathamandu's airport has caused delays, with Indian TV reporting that an Indian relief flight was forced to turn back.

United Nations World Food Programme spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told AFP that the agency planned "a large, massive operation".

Video footage filmed at base camp of a "50 storey wall of snow" avalanche hits..

Nepal earthquake: International aid effort increased - BBC News

Villages Near Nepal Earthquake’s Epicenter Are Desperate as Death Toll Tops 3,800

SAURPANI, Nepal — Five hours by car from Katmandu, then by foot for several miles past the spot where the road is blocked by boulders and mud, people from the villages near the epicenter of Nepal’s powerful earthquake are burying their dead, despairing of help arriving anytime soon.

On Monday afternoon, Parbati Dhakal and several dozen of her neighbors walked two hours down a jungle path, carrying 11 bodies attached to bamboo poles. They stopped at a riverbank where they lowered the dead into holes.

One of the villagers pointed to the people gathered there and identified them, one by one: “Father just buried; mother just buried; sister just buried.”

Back in Saurpani, an ethnic Gurkha village at the epicenter of Saturday’s quake, Ms. Dhakal said, “we have no shelter, no food and all the bodies are scattered around.”

A day after Nepal’s worst earthquake in 80 years, the official death toll had risen to more than 3,800, and humanitarian aid was starting to flow to the capital.

Katmandu’s airport had been so overloaded by aid and passenger planes that incoming flights sat for hours on the runway. Nepali expatriates were flying in, desperate to track down family members, and setting off down the airport access road on foot, rolling suitcases behind them.

But outside the capital, many of the worst-hit villages in the ridges around Katmandu remain a black hole, surrounded by landslides that make them inaccessible even to the country’s armed forces. Nepali authorities on Monday began airdropping packages of tarpaulins, dry food and medicine into mountain villages, but an attempt to land helicopters was abandoned, said Brigadier General Jagadish Chandra Pokharel, an army spokesman.

The government is only gradually getting a grasp of the destruction in these isolated places. It is nearly impossible to identify which villages are most in need, and how many may be dead or injured, said Jeffrey Shannon, director of programs for Mercy Corps in Nepal.

“Right now, what we’re hearing from everybody, including our own staff, is that we don’t know,” he said. “As people start to travel these roads, to reach these communities, you run into landslides. They’re simply inaccessible, the ones that need the most help.”

The chief bureaucrat in Gorkha district, Uddhav Timilsina, said rescue crews were unable even to distribute relief, because they are confronting as many as eight to 10 landslides between one village and its nearest neighbor. He said 250 deaths had been reported so far, but that it would take more time to get an accurate count.

“Phone lines are down, electricity is out, roads are blocked, so what can we do?” he said.

In interviews, residents of hard-hit villages said their plight had not been in the foreground during the early days of the crisis. Prakash Dhakal, a native of the village of Saurpani, was in Katmandu when the earthquake struck, and visited a government office on Sunday to plead with an official to send help.

“I asked them to send 25 young people to help bury our dead and search for the injured,” Mr. Dhakal said. “They told me, ‘We can’t even rescue the injured in Katmandu. How do you expect us to do anything for you now?’  ”

More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/wo...uake.html?_r=0

Government opens bank account to accept donations for quake victims

The Thai government has opened a bank account to rally donations to help those affected by the earthquake in Nepal.
The name of the Krung Thai bank account for the donation is, “Thais Giving Their Hearts to Nepal”, and the account number is 067-0-10330-6.

The public can now donate money into the account to help the victims of a tremor in Nepal.

All donations will be sent to Nepal to help those gravely affected by the strong quake, which rocked the country 2 days ago.

Donations could also be made via all 7-Eleven convenient stores starting today.

Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-o-cha was the first to donate 100,000 baht to the account to help Nepal.

Meanwhile, 34 Thai nationals who scheduled to depart the quake-stricken country via the Nepal Airlines flight RA401 and arrived in Bangkok at 4 p.m. was cancelled. No reason was given.

In the mean time, THAI’s flight TG320 which was scheduled to bring back 7 Thai students from Nepal to Bangkok today was also delayed indefinitely.

Up until now, only a total of 29 Thai nationals had safely returned to Thailand after the earthquake.

Government opens bank account to accept donations for quake victims - Thai PBS English News

Doctors in Thailand to help quake-hit Nepal

BANGKOK, 27 April 2015 (NNT) - A total of 350 doctors across Thailand have volunteered to aid people in earthquake-hit Nepal, according to the Medical Council of Thailand

The council said the 350 doctors had registered on its website since Monday afternoon. The volunteers would be divided into groups according to their fields of expertise to facilitate Nepal's medical needs.

The earthquake struck near Kathmandu on Saturday and claimed more than 3,200 lives and injured more than 6,500.

http://thainews.prd.go.th/centerweb/....n5pUv7ik.dpuf

BBC has footage of the first rescue helicopters going out to remote villages. Interview with tourists saying other tourists were among the dead they saw.

Nepal earthquake: Eight million people affected, UN says - BBC News

The death toll has risen to 4,310, with almost 8,000 injured, officials say.
But Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has warned the toll could reach 10,000, telling Reuters news agency the government was on a "war footing".


The situation is critical in the remote rural regions towards the epicentre of Saturday's quake.

Rebecca McAteer, an American doctor who was one of the first to arrive in the district of Gorkha close to the epicentre, told Associated Press that 90% of houses there were "just flattened".

She said most residents were older men and women and children, as the younger men had left to find work elsewhere.
Many have also lost livestock and have little food.

250 feared missing after remote Nepal village hit by post-quake mudslide, avalanche

Report says contact was made after Saturday’s earthquake, then lost



GORKHA, NEPAL—An official says 250 people are believed missing following a mudslide and avalanche in an isolated village in rural Nepal not far from the epicenter of Saturday's powerful earthquake.

District official Gautam Rimal says heavy snow had been falling Tuesday near the village, Ghodatabela. He said officials received initial reports of the disaster by phone but then lost contact some time after Saturday’s magnitude-7.8 quake.

The village, 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.

Meanwhile, helicopters criss-crossed the skies above the mountains of Gorkha district Tuesday near the epicentre of the weekend earthquake, ferrying the injured to clinics, and taking emergency supplies back to remote villages devastated by the disaster in Nepal that killed more than 4,400 people across the region.

More here: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/20...hit-10000.html

Nepal earthquake: UN launches $415m appeal



The UN has launched a $415m (£270m) appeal for those affected by Nepal's earthquake, as frustration mounts at the pace of relief efforts.

The UN said it wanted to support government efforts to provide emergency relief over the next three months.

Riot police have clashed with people trying to leave the capital Kathmandu, and there are reports of villagers blocking trucks carrying supplies.

The government says it has been overwhelmed by the disaster.

Saturday's 7.8-magnitude quake killed more than 5,000 people and injured at least 10,000.

The UN says more than eight million people have been affected and some 70,000 houses have been destroyed.

Although aid is starting to get through, some people in remote areas closest to the epicentre of the quake are stranded without shelter, food or water.

"Although I am heartened and encouraged by the progress of the response to date, efforts need to be maintained and stepped up to ensure vital assistance reaches all the affected, especially those in the remote areas," said the UN's resident co-ordinator for Nepal, Jamie McGoldrick.

More here: Nepal earthquake: UN launches $415m appeal - BBC News

Nepal earthquake: Calgary couple describe harrowing escape from mountainside

Ancient temples brought to their knees. Foreign rescue teams combing great piles of rubble in search of survivors. And funeral pyres burning 24 hours a day as the dead are counted and cremated.

There are a lot shell-shocked faces wandering the streets of Kathmandu, Nepal, as people struggle to make sense of what's happened here.


Calgarians Jacq Warrell and her husband, Cam Dobranski, were hiking on a mountain in the Langtang region when the earthquake hit. They scrambled to safety from an altitude of 3,300 metres with the help of local villagers.


A young woman from Calgary is one of them. Jacq Warrell and her husband, Cam Dobranski, were married in Nepal just two days before the earthquake hit.

When it did, they say, they had little time to think of anything beyond survival.

"We were at about probably 3,300 metres on the side of the mountain when the quake struck, and we were actually pretty lucky where we were. We watched a lot of rock slides happen around us, and we crawled over rock slides to get out," said Warrell.

"We've been in refugee camps and watched people die, and it's time to go home."

The pair were hiking in the Langtang region of Nepal, which stretches north of Kathmandu up to the border with Tibet.

"The mountains literally shook," said Dobranski. "It was like Jell-O. You had to lie down."

Five days later, they have made it down from the mountain.

"We walked, ran, crawled, scrambled," they said, until they made it here — to a city they expected to be flattened.

Their time on the mountain was an informational black hole, they said.

They were not impressed with Canada's services for citizens abroad, despite managing to get through to the emergency help line when their cellphone found a signal.

"But when we were calling from the mountain, trying to save our lives, they just put us on hold and gave us an email [address] to email them," they said.

The consular service is much better now that they're in the city, they said.

"To sit on a mountain and have no information. Everybody's scared. There's people screaming, dying. It's scary," said Dobranski. "We know of four Canadians still out there."


The focus on trekkers in Nepal has so far been on those trapped near or on Mount Everest. But the Calgary pair say there are many hikers — not to mention the local population — stuck in the Langtang Valley.

People from nearby villages helped the couple, offering them food, even though their own homes had been swept away.

The Calgary couple's testimony paints a picture of the devastation wrought by the quake in areas still difficult to access.

"All the houses are destroyed." said Dobranski of the village they had been staying in. "It looks kind of somewhat normal here. [But]
everything where we were is destroyed … every village is destroyed, every house is destroyed or damaged."

The couple had decided to leave Nepal on a commercial flight instead of the military plane offered up by the Canadian government, which will fly citizens to New Delhi. But that flight fell victim to congestion at Kathmandu's tiny airport and was cancelled. So Wednesday night, along with 96 other passengers of different nationalities, they boarded the C-177 sent by Canada.

How will they remember their wedding?

"Maybe in 10 years for our anniversary, we'll come back and complete the trek," Warrell said.

For now, their thoughts are with those they met on the trail who didn't make it and for the people of Nepal.

"We get to leave, we get to get on a plane and get home … but to think about all the people who are still here and have to deal with the devastation and rebuild … that's hard," Warrell said.

Nepal earthquake: Calgary couple describe harrowing escape from mountainside - World - CBC News

Soldiers rescued a 4-month-old boy from rubble left by the devastating earthquake in Nepal

Twenty-two hours after the massive earthquake that demolished buildings and killed more than 5,000 people in Nepal, a 4-month-old boy was rescued from the rubble.

The boy, named Sonit Awal, was buried under the rubble of his family’s house in Bhaktapur, near Kathmandu, when it collapsed during Saturday’s earthquake. According to a story in local newspaper Kathmandu Today, translated by the Guardian, rescuers tried until midnight to extract the baby from bricks and other debris that had fallen on him during the quake, but were unsuccessful. The next morning, after the child’s father said he heard the baby crying throughout the night, the rescue team returned, and by 10 a.m. Sunday, it finally pulled the child to safety.

Sonit Awal was alive and, the paper reported, found free of injuries after a visit to Bhaktapur hospital. Bhaktapur was one of the areas hardest hit by the earthquake that, as of Wednesday, had killed more than 5,000 people in Nepal. Several rescue teams have been deployed to the densely-packed residential community — where mostly brick-and-wood houses and apartment buildings collapsed under the pressure — and they continue to pull survivors like Sonit from the wreckage.

Baby pulled safely from under rubble in Nepal

Nepal earthquake: Teenage boy rescued after five days


A teenage boy has been rescued after surviving for five days in the rubble of a building, following an earthquake that killed some 5,500 people in Nepal.
A huge crowd cheered as rescuers brought the boy out of the rubble in the capital, Kathmandu. The boy has now been taken to a field hospital.

In Kathmandu, rescue workers from Nepal and the US worked for hours to free the boy from the rubble of the building.

The boy, identified as Pemba Lama, eventually emerged blinking into the sunlight.
He was carried away on a stretcher with a blue brace strapped around his neck, and has now been taken to an Israeli-run field hospital.

The BBC's Yogita Limaye tweets that the boy told her he survived by drinking water from wet clothes and eating from pots of clarified butter.

Andrew Olvera, an official from the US Agency for International Development, earlier told the Associated Press news agency that the boy had been trapped between the collapsed floors of the building but was not "too far down".

On Wednesday night, Nepalese soldiers in the town of Bhaktapur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, reportedly rescued an 11-year-old girl from earthquake rubble.

More here: Nepal earthquake: Teenage boy rescued after five days - BBC News

Nepal Officials Slammed Over Aid Response

KATHMANDU—
The United Nations and numerous non-governmental organizations seeking to assist quake-stricken Nepal are blaming the country’s weak government, with a reputation for inefficiency and corruption, for hindering the massive relief effort.

VOA News has compiled from various organizations complaints from across Nepal of bottlenecks at customs, repeated harassing inspections of aid convoys and seizure of goods by local officials intent on distributing them along sectarian lines.

“If the Nepal government had any brains what they would do is call together all the outsiders who’ve come to help and the local NGO’s and delegate to them,” said a prominent actor, Shiva Shrestha, who is helping with aid efforts. “If the government tries to do it on its own it’s going to be too late.”

At Tribhuvan International Airport relief materials are piling up due to a customs backlog. The country, since the earthquake, has lifted import taxes on tarpaulins and tents, but not on other items critically needed for millions of hungry and homeless survivors of the April 25 earthquake.

U.N. officials are calling for that to change.

"They should not be using peacetime customs methodology," the U.N.’s resident representative in Nepal, Jamie McGoldrick, told Reuters news agency.

Even for local organizations the effort required to get supplies donated from overseas has proven to be Kafkaesque, requiring multiple trips among several ministries to get signatures for clearances of imports.

Nepal Officials Slammed Over Aid Response

Thailand offers help to restore shattered ancient temples in Nepal

BANGKOK, 11 May 2015 (NNT) – Officials from the Ministry of Culture, the Fine Arts Department and the Department of Religious Affairs as well as national historians and architects are integrating their efforts to help restore World Heritage sites in Nepal ruined by the recent earthquake.

Minister of Culture Weera Rotephotchanarat said that on 25 May, UNESCO will send officials to conduct surveys to evaluate damages on the World Heritage sites. The Culture Ministry has sent UNESCO a letter offering Thai support in the restoration mission. It has also informed the Embassy of Nepal in Bangkok about Thailand’s readiness to deliver the support.

Weera added that if UNESCO and the Nepalese Embassy agree to the Thai offer, the ministry will ask for the greenlight from the cabinet to proceed with its project immediately. However, the Nepalese government is currently busy with assistance to survivors and has not so far allowed any group to undertake the restoration of its archaeological remains.

The Minister added that the Fine Arts Department is working with historians to study the architectural structure of various World Heritage sites in order to define maintenance approaches as well as a safety system to protect the remains from future earthquakes.

As for the Thai Buddhist temples such as Muni Vihara located in Bhaktapur, the minister said they received little damage. On the contrary, Ananda Kuti Vihar, a Theravada Buddhist temple of Nepal, was heavily destroyed in the quake. -

http://thainews.prd.go.th/centerweb/....Or0i4c4y.dpuf

Quake-hit Nepal Reopens Annapurna Circuit




KATHMANDU—
Nepal reopened its most popular trekking trail to tourists on Thursday after
international experts said it was safe, three months after two devastating earthquakes led the government to close most hiking routes.

Miyamoto International, a California-based structural engineering company, said in a report that quake-related damage in the Annapurna region "was very limited."

Less than one percent of the route and three percent of guest houses along the Annapurna circuit were damaged, it said, adding the report for the Everest region would be completed shortly.

Nepal had asked the company to assess the safety of its most popular tourist trekking trails, including in the Everest region, after the twin earthquakes killed almost 9,000 people and shook mountains triggering avalanches. Among the victims were scores of climbers and guides.

The Annapurna and the Everest region receive more than 140,000 hikers, or 70 percent of all climbers and trekkers who visit Nepal each year.

The 240-km Annapurna circuit takes almost three weeks to complete. It is dubbed the "apple pie" circuit because teahouses line the route offering cold beer and home baking.

Government officials say tourists arrivals may decline by about 40 percent in 2015 because of safety concerns.

The Himalayan nation is one of the poorest in the world and many people depend on tourism for their income.

Climbing on Mount Everest is closed for the second season in a row after Sherpas refused to rebuild broken paths across a deadly glacier after the earthquake struck.

The Langtang valley, Nepal's third most popular trekking destination, remains closed after the first quake in April triggered a catastrophic landslide.

Quake-hit Nepal Reopens Annapurna Circuit

Nepal Makes Scant Progress in Rebuilding 2 Years After Quake

SANKHU, NEPAL —
The paved alleys are still lined by the skeletons of homes once filled with families. Shop shelves are empty, and the water well in the center of town remains clogged by fallen debris. Children carefully side-step piles of broken brick on their way to school.

This is life today in the tiny Nepalese farming town of Sankhu, once famed for its lively Hindu temple festivals and rich produce markets just outside the capital of Kathmandu.

Nearly everything was lost on April 25, 2015, when a terrifying earthquake shook the Himalayan nation, killing more than 9,000 people and toppling nearly a million homes nationwide. Little progress has been made in the two years since, raising questions about the government's commitment to the recovery effort as well as the fate of billions of dollars in foreign aid.

In Sankhu, where the quake claimed 98 lives and toppled 800 homes, most of the remaining residents have struggled to restore what they once had. Many say they have yet to receive any help from the government despite pledges of aid money and help with bank loans.


‘Ruins and no hope’

“Our town was once one of the best known towns in the country,” said 70-year-old Komal Nath Shrestha. “Now all we have is ruins and no hope.”

Shrestha spent four hours after the quake buried in the rubble of his ruined four-story home before family members pulled him out. Now, he is among hundreds in Sankhu living in tin sheds and tarpaulin tents that have popped up in fields and along roadsides as meager protection from winter cold and summer rains.

The violence and devastation wrought by the earthquake dominated newspaper headlines worldwide and triggered an outpouring of foreign concern. Aid pledges totaling $4.2 billion poured in - about half what the government estimates it will cost to rebuild homes and infrastructure.

The government is still collecting that foreign aid, with agreements signed already for $3.1 billion. But to date, it has spent only $330,000.

That's allowed Nepal to rebuild just 3.5 percent of 626,694 homes so far counted as having been destroyed in the quake. And even that count is incomplete, including only homes in the 14 worst-hit districts. There are still another 17 districts to survey.


‘Refugees in our home town’

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Nepalese left homeless by the quake are preparing to spend a third rainy season hunkered down in temporary shelters, often flooded and exposed to the elements, relying on handouts of one-time sales for cash to get by.

“We are refugees in our home town,” said Ram Shahi, who was Sankhu's butcher until the quake put him out of business. “We have bugs and even snakes crawling inside the tin sheds when it rains. We cannot cook because the floor is flooded and clothes get all soaked.”

The government has been criticized for moving slowly in dispersing funds that would allow people to rebuild on their own. It has said those who need to rebuild would be offered a first aid installment of 50,000 rupees, or $485, followed by second $1,455 payment and a third worth $970. If families needed more, it said they would be offered low-interest loans for up to $24,270.

But only first installments have been given so far to 87 percent of families that have qualified for aid.


‘That money was peanuts’

For the rice farming families of Shree Krishna Singh and his brother, that $485 payment falls far short of the $72,800 it's cost them to rebuild their shattered home.

“That money was peanuts, not even enough to dig and lay the foundation,” Singh said. Still, they consider themselves among the lucky in that they could sell their rice field to build a new, white concrete home. Now, though, they're out of work.

Others have been far less fortunate.

“The tin roofs are leaking,” retired teacher Satya Narayan said of the makeshift shelter he's occupied since the quake. “We get water all over the ground. It gets cold at night, and like an oven in the day.”

But Narayan hasn't even qualified for earthquake assistance, because like many in Nepal, where records are haphazard, he doesn't have the documents to prove he owns his land.

A report by the rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Nepal of failing to help some of the most marginalized among its quake victims, with tens of thousands locked out of the reconstruction program because they can't prove land ownership.


‘Grant is not enough’

Officials with the National Reconstruction Authority acknowledge their efforts are falling short.

“The grant is not enough,” but it is meant to help people get started rebuilding their homes, said Govind Raj Pokharel, who heads the National Reconstruction Authority.

He said the government hopes people will follow earthquake safety standards in their construction, but admits the aid won't cover most of the costs. He said the government was trying to persuade the central bank to work on the loans, but so far terms have yet to be finalized.

A bigger challenge, Pokharel said, is that the agency does not have control over the aid money, but has to rely on government ministries to send out needed funds. The result is bureaucratic delay.

Bank orders from the National Reconstruction Authority often go ignored, according to Mona Sherpa of the Swiss nonprofit agency Helvetas. Their work helping victims with reconstruction has been frustrating, she admitted.

“We wanted to start work, but then as we got into this process we realized that the process itself is really lengthy,” she said, blaming bureaucracy and a lack of coordination between construction agencies and authorities for chronic delays.

Nepal Makes Scant Progress in Rebuilding 2 Years After Quake