Nepal Quake Aftershocks Terrify Survivors as Death Toll Tops 3,600
Local officials in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu have upped the death count in the region to more than 3,600 following Saturday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake that has left thousands in the region injured and without shelter.
“We don’t have anyplace to go,” Mohammed Kabil told the New York Times as he sat huddled with a group of others in the wreckage of the toppled Dharahara Tower, warming themselves by a fire as rain soaked them Sunday. “We don’t have any clothes, we don’t have enough food, we don’t have medicine, we don’t know when we can go back into our homes.”
A senior interior ministry official told Reuters that authorities are struggling to make contact with remote regions surrounding Kathmandu, and that the death toll “could reach 5,000.”
Following aftershocks in the region, thousands in and around Kathmandu are terrified to stay indoors, and have taken to sleeping outside in tents. “Everyone is scared,” Samir Thapa, a security guard, told the Times. “Everyone is saying it will come again. No one is going to sleep at home.”
The encampments are already posing health risks, the BBC reports, with many sleeping in basic tents with minimal protections; some are “sleeping on carpets and mattresses outside their homes” and water has become scarce.
Relief efforts have been slow going, with fewer than a fifth of scheduled daily flights arriving at Tribhuvan International Airport. Hundreds of residents and tourists have lined up desperate for a flight out of the country.
On Mount Everest, hundreds of climbers await rescue by helicopter from base camp, where an avalanche triggered by the quake killed 18 people, including three Americans. From the Times:
On Mount Everest, helicopter rescue operations began Sunday morning to take wounded climbers off the mountain, where at least 18 climbers were killed and 41 others injured. At least three Americans were among the dead: Marisa Eve Girawong, a physician assistant working for Madison Mountaineering of Seattle; Dan Fredinburg, a Google engineer; and, according to Reuters, Tom Taplin, a 61-year-old filmmaker from Colorado.
The indiscriminate destruction of the quake leveled many of the country’s historic structures—Nepali Times editor Kunda Dixit has described the wreckage as “culturally speaking, an incalculable loss.”
