in Kathmandu
Cotton, splints, antibiotics, IV drips, dressings, blades, sterile gloves. These were just some of the items on a handwritten list of supplies – photographed and circulated widely on social media yesterday – urgently required by Bir Hospital in Kathmandu as it tried to cope with a
huge influx of patients injured in the earthquake that struck the country at the weekend.
That one of Kathmandu’s premier hospitals had already run short of such basic items highlighted Nepal’s lack of preparedness to cope with a massive earthquake, which geologists have long warned was inevitable in the Himalayas, one of the world’s youngest and most tectonically unstable mountain ranges.
In its appeal for help to deal with the aftermath of Saturday’s earthquake, the Nepali government has asked the international community to provide supplies that include body bags for the dead, bulldozers to clear rubble and helicopters to reach remote areas.
Search-and-rescue and disaster relief personnel, especially from Nepal's two powerful neighbours, India and China, arrived late on Saturday, while thousands of Nepali police and military were assigned to rescue those trapped in the rubble but were struggling to get through the blocked narrow lanes of the city.
Aftermath
Most residents of Kathmandu, and those living in mountain villages across
Nepal
, were left largely on their own as they struggled to cope with the aftermath of the disaster.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said food, water, shelter and medical care were urgently required.
Hospitals and healthcare professionals have been under particularly heavy strain, as they tried to care for approximately 6,200 people so far known to have been injured in the quake.
“Patients are pouring in and we are trying to do the best that we can, though we are sometimes not able to provide the care that we want,” said Dr Praveen Nepal at Norvic International Hospital, a 125-bed private hospital in Kathmandu.
Dr Nepal said many of Kathmandu’s smaller hospitals had been forced to close as they had suffered structural damage, while bigger hospitals were so overwhelmed with the inflow of patients they were treating people outside in tents.
“In Kathmandu Valley, hospitals are overcrowded, running out of room for storing dead bodies, and also running out of emergency medical supplies,” the Office of the United Nation’s Resident Co-ordinator wrote in a situation report.
“Bir hospital is treating people in the streets.”
Strain was also evident at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport, where thousands of people, mainly foreign tourists, struggled to escape the stricken country, which was at the height of its mountaineering-centred tourist season when the disaster struck.
The airport was closed to commercial flights after the quake on Saturday. It reopened yesterday morning, only to shut again a few hours later, after an aftershock with a magnitude of 6.7 sent air traffic control crews fleeing the tower. Meanwhile, the Indian Air Force has evacuated hundreds of its own citizens on military flights.
Tent camps
Many of Kathmandu’s inhabitants, estimated at more than 1 million, had remained outside since the quake, concerned about the potential impact of aftershocks on buildings already structurally weakened from the first jolt. Tent camps have sprouted up across the city.
Employees of Huawei, which provides back-end support to the country’s mobile phone networks, pitched tents to create a camp and sheltered 250 in the car park of the British school.
But the survivors’ misery was compounded yesterday evening by a major storm, which sent many residents fleeing back to their homes.
Nepali authorities were not unaware of the risks of a major quake. Last year the country marked the 80th anniversary of a quake that had flattened much of what was then a Himalayan kingdom, and prompted a rule that no buildings should be more than five storeys. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015)