Two days after the devastating earthquake in Nepal, a story appeared in the local press about Bhaktapur, a historic city in the wider Kathmandu Valley. Ram and Maiya Baasi were outside their home, now reduced to rubble, searching for ways to get in and recover something, anything, of value. Their injured daughter was in the district hospital, and needed to be transferred to another. But all their money and resources lay buried in the ruins of their home. Others warned them not to get too close, as severe aftershocks continued. The mother insisted on going in, but could recover little. Meanwhile, next door, four corpses were found.
My family lives only a few miles away, but it was luckier. Our house remained intact, and my father, who has limited mobility, was able to stay safely indoors. My mother was travelling in the eastern hills and was unhurt; she returned home the next day. When I spoke to her over Skype, she said that the constant tremors and aftershocks frightened her, but my father spoke more calmly, about the uselessness of panic. Bhaktapur is only ten miles from the central government district, but for almost four days after the earthquake, the state still had not been able to assess the loss there, reach out to citizens, or send rescue teams to clear debris and provide a measure of relief.
The great earthquake, as the Nepalese press is calling it, measured 7.8 on the Richter scale; its epicenter was in a hill district eighty kilometres northwest of Kathmandu. The United Nations has estimated that more than a quarter of the country’s population, as many as eight million people, has been affected. By Monday evening, nine days after the earthquake, the government had declared that seven thousand three hundred and sixty-five people had died, fourteen thousand three hundred and sixty-six had been injured, and almost half a million had been displaced from their homes. The finance minister reported that more than ten thousand government buildings, including schools and health centers, were destroyed, and that thirteen thousand other buildings were damaged. The government estimates that more than two hundred thousand houses have been destroyed.
The capital of Kathmandu has remained the center of attention since the tragedy. Because of severe aftershocks, for the first three nights, most of the city slept out in the open, in public spaces, fields, even inside sewage pipes. There are shortages of drinking water and food, and other essential supplies are running low. On Tuesday, a journalist tweeted from Harissiddhi, on the outskirts of the city, “Tonight’s dinner is their last pack of rice. They need food. Water sources contaminated.” Devendra Raj Panday, a former finance minister and a leading civil-society activist, walked Kathmandu’s streets on Tuesday and reported a critical need for sanitation and waste-disposal services. What the capital is now witnessing is an exodus. Half a million citizens have left out of fear, but mostly to track the fate of their families back in villages affected by the tragedy.
Information about the scale of the crisis in rural Nepal has only just started to emerge, through aerial surveys, rescue missions, social media, and those who have been able to leave their villages and report to the world. A friend from Gorkha said that her village had been destroyed and that the entire community had been sleeping in a goat shed. Another friend wrote that all of the homes in Thame, in the Khumbu region of Everest, had collapsed. From the village of Sikharpur, in the Sindhupalchowk district, a news agency reported that “a foul smell has started emanating from the bodies of the dead,” posing the threat of an epidemic. Sindhupalchowk appears to be among the most severely affected districts. A limited number of tents had arrived in the region, but local administrators were unsure how to distribute the supplies that have come their way. “It must be the same everywhere, so it may not be possible for the government to come to the rescue of all,” Subash Majhi, a survivor, told the news agency. “But if we could get some tents and medicine, we could have some ground to live on.”
One view holds that no government could have dealt with a crisis of this magnitude, let alone Nepal’s; the country was locked in civil war between 1996 and 2006, and has been unable to write a constitution since then. Under the circumstances, according to this view, the government is doing its best. Civil servants and the security forces are also doing a credible job, putting their own lives at risk. The bulk of Nepal’s Army and security forces are involved in rescue and relief operations. Many Nepalese believe that it is time to bury political differences, work together, support the government, channel relief through its agencies, donate to the Prime Minister’s relief fund, and strengthen the state system.
Another view holds that, because Nepal is in a seismically vulnerable zone, the government should have been better prepared. No one disputes the contributions of foot soldiers in the rescue effort, but there is obvious frustration with the government response. Reaching out to all locations immediately may not have been possible, but there is emerging criticism of the government’s actions in the first three days, when rescue needs were most acute; its neglect of rural regions; its failure to have stockpiled basic supplies; the inertia of political parties that have not been on the ground helping citizens; and the government’s confusing and contradictory directives on requirements for receiving international assistance.