Hundreds feared dead as another strong earthquake strikes devastated Nepal
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Version 0 of 1. Hundreds are feared dead in a remote region of Nepal after the country was hit by a second strong earthquake, just weeks after the disaster that killed more than 8,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. The new quake has left 42 dead with more than 1,100 injured, according to officials. It had a magnitude of 7.3 and struck about 42 miles (68km) west ofthe town of Namche Bazaar, close to Mount Everest. Related: Nepal earthquake: US helicopter reported missing as dozens reported dead – live There are fears that the district of Dolakha, where the epicentre of the latest earthquake was located, may have been badly hit. A home ministry spokesperson, Laxmi Dhakal, said the ministry had received reports that “the villages of Dolakha are destroyed like what had happened in Sindhupalchowk [district] during the first quake”. Dhakal said: “We immediately deployed at least five helicopters to those areas.” More than 3,000 people were killed in Sindhupalchowk district in last month’s earthquake. The district also suffered significant damage on Tuesday. Krishna Gyawali, the most senior local official, said at least eight people had been killed there and more than 100 injured. The number of deaths and injuries was expected to rise in Sindhupalchowk, Gyawali told the Guardian, “because dozens of houses collapsed”. Witnesses reported widespread damage with roads damaged by rockfalls. Security officials were working to open the highways to the district on Tuesday night. However the gravest fears were for Dolakha, where 25 deaths had been reported so far, Kamal Singh Bam, the national police spokesman said. “Dolakha appears the worst hit,” he told the Guardian. The police chief of the district, which is close to the world’s highest mountains and the border with Tibet, said 80 more were injured, many seriously. Aid agencies who had flown over the area during the afternoon said several villages appeared to have been badly damaged. With dozens of helicopters from India, China and the US based in Nepal – a stark contrast to last month – relief operations were launched immediately. Nepalese and Indian army helicopters had reached Dolakha within hours of the new earthquake and begun ferrying the wounded from the district headquarters to Kathmandu. “One recce [reconnaissance] helicopter had gone and they saw landslides. They did a casualty evacuation from one village,” said Sitanshu Kar, spokesman for the Indian ministry of defence. There were concerns on Tuesday night for a US marine helicopter that was supporting disaster relief in the Charikot area, in central Nepal, when it was declared missing at about 10pm local time. Six US marines and two Nepalese soldiers were in the helicopter, which was participating in Operation Sahayogi Haat, but a search for the aircraft has been called off because of the dark and rugged terrain, according to Reuters. “Essentially what we have right now is truly a missing helicopter. We simply don’t know its location,” Colonel Steve Warren told Reuters. There were also concerns over a large glacial lake in northern Dolakha district called Tso Rolpa, which is held back by a fragile natural dam and threatens the lives of thousands of villagers. One local official in Jhume, a remote village in Dolakha, said the situation was very bad. However, as with last month’s quake, the timing helped reduce casualties. “One hundred percent of the houses are collapsed in the village but luckily only three people died, as all the people had gone to field for planting maize,” said Krishna Kumar Karki, of the Jhume village development committee. Hundreds of people are now living in fields with no electricity and proper food and water. “There are still landslides going on,” Karki said. Rajendra Manandhar, a local journalist at Charikot in Dolakha, said: “None of the houses are standing in the area, all of them have turned to rubble.” The epicentre was much closer to Everest base camp than that of the 25 April quake. The earlier quake triggered a massive avalanche that killed 18 climbers and support staff waiting to ascend the world’s tallest peak. Mountaineering companies have called off their spring expeditions. Seventeen people were killed in India, according to local officials. The earth also shook strongly across the Nepalese border in Tibet’s Jilong and Zhangmu regions. Tuesday’s quake came from a depth of 11.5 miles, deeper than the 9.3 miles of the quake on 25 April. Deeper earthquakes tend to cause less damage at the surface. The 7.3 magnitude means it was about a fifth as strong as April’s 7.8 quake. In Lamosangu in Sindhupalchowk witnesses described people “screaming and weeping as if the world was ending”. Krishna Lama and his five-year-old daughter ran from their camp. He said: “I could hardly hold my child it was shaking so much. My parents died in landslides last year. Now it seems it is our turn.” In Gorkha district, the epicentre of the earthquake last month, there were reports of limited damage. Jen Hardy, of Catholic Relief Services, who are distributing aid to remote villages in the district, said she saw two houses that had been badly damaged in the previous quake fall down. Related: Nepal hit by another major earthquake - in pictures “We are on a ridge and so got shaken pretty badly. It was quite strong and there was a lot of crying. People are very shaky. The mobile network is down and everyone is trying to reach loved ones. No one is staying anywhere near a building,” Hardy said. All over the areas affected by the two quakes, people were returning to makeshift camps in parks, parade grounds and even roundabouts, which had been set up last month but dismantled in recent days as confidence returned. Bijeta Singh, 24, was among the many preparing to sleep out in Kathmandu. “We are very scared that it might happen again,” she said. “It was getting a little back to normal, but now we are right back to what it was like after the first earthquake hit.” The latest disaster comes amid a humanitarian emergency in Nepal, with aid yet to reach many remote parts of the impoverished Himalayan nation after roads were wrecked by landslides. At least half a million Nepalese are already without homes and living in makeshift camps or on the ruins of their houses. The UN last week said it had received just $22m (£14m) of the $415m it had appealed for as it called for aid contributions to be “dramatically ramped up”. There have been rows over the aid that has already been sent, with western officials accusing the Nepalese government of trying to centralise its distribution, hampering efforts to reach those most in need. Speaking after an emergency meeting of his cabinet, the Nepalese prime minister, Sushil Koirala, said: “At an hour of a natural disaster like this, we have to face it with courage and patience.” Koirala was heckled by the survivors of last month’s earthquake after the government struggled to cope with the scale of the disaster. His government acknowledged that it was overwhelmed by the challenge. The search for survivors of the first quake who were still trapped in remote areas such as the Langtang valley was continuing as late as last week, with whole villages in that part of the country – which is popular with trekkers – wiped out in last month’s quake and aftershocks. More than three-quarters of the buildings in Kathmandu have already been judged uninhabitable or unsafe without major repairs, according to a survey carried out at the beginning of May. The Nepalese government has announced that it has postponed a return to classes for schoolchildren across the country by two weeks, to 29 May. |