Riots for relief supplies

The death toll from the devastating earthquake in Nepal four days ago rose past 5,000 yesterday as officials conceded they had made mistakes in their initial response, leaving survivors stranded in remote villages waiting for aid and relief.

Desperate Nepalis clashed with riot police and seized supplies of bottled water as anger over the government’s slow response boiled over among survivors in the now ruined city of Kathmandu. The capital is home to some 2.5 million people. 

Desperate to leave the area, thousands began gathering from before dawn at the main bus station after the government promised to lay on special services to far-flung rural areas. But when the buses failed to materialise, anger began surging and scuffles broke out between the crowds and riot police who were sent in to try to contain the situation near Parliament.

Some protesters forced a truck carrying drinking water off the road and climbed on top of it, throwing the bottles into the crowd.

The government has yet to assess fully the devastation wrought by Saturday’s quake, unable to reach many mountainous areas despite aid supplies and personnel pouring in from around the world.

Anger and frustration were mounting steadily, with many Nepalis sleeping out in the open under makeshift tents for a fourth night since the country’s worst quake in more than 80 years.

Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has said the death toll could reach 10,000, with information on casualties and damage from far-flung villages and towns yet to come in.

That would surpass the 8,500 who died in a 1934 earthquake, the last disaster of this scale to hit the Himalayan nation of 28 million people that sits between India and China.

Rescue helicopters have been unable to land in remote mountainous areas. Shambhu Khatri, a technician on board one of the helicopters, said entire hillsides had collapsed in parts of the worst-hit Gorkha district, burying settlements, and access was impossible.

A health official in Laprak, a village in the district best known as the home of Gurkha soldiers, estimated that 1,600 of the 1,700 houses in the village had been razed.

An official from the Home Ministry said the number of confirmed deaths had risen to 5,006. Almost 10,000 were injured in Nepal, and more than 80 were killed in India and Tibet.

In Kathmandu and other cities, hospitals quickly overflowed with injured soon after the quake, with many being treated out in the open or not at all.

Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi appealed for specialist doctors from overseas, as well as for search-and-rescue teams, despite earlier suggestions from officials that Nepal did not need such assistance.

“Our top priority is for relief and rescue teams. We need neurologists, orthopaedic surgeons and trauma surgeons,” Bairagi said.

On Tuesday, the head of the United Nations Development Programme in Nepal said Kathmandu had told aid agencies it did not need more foreign rescue teams because its government and military could cope.

Experts from a Polish non-governmental organisation that has an 87-strong team in Nepal have said the chances of finding people alive in the ruins five days after the quake was “next to zero”.

Rare hope

International aid has begun arriving in Nepal, but disbursement has been slow, partly because aftershocks have sporadically closed the airport.

Some vendors have started selling fruit on Kathmandu’s streets, but others said they were too scared to open their shops because buildings had been so badly damaged.

“I want to start selling, I have children at home, but how can I reopen a shop where it is risky for me to sit inside?” said Arjun Rai.

In a rare glimmer of hope, Nepali-French Rishi Khanal, was rescued from a collapsed building on Tuesday after he had spent about 80 hours trapped in a room with three dead bodies.