April 28,2015
KATHMANDU— Time is running out to find more survivors of Saturday’s huge earthquake in Nepal, which the country’s prime minister estimates could have killed 10,000 people.
But the effort to get critical support into the landlocked Himalayan nation has ironically been hampered by overwhelming generosity, which has inundated the only international airport.
Tribhuvan International Airport now resembles a military base with planes, helicopters, soldiers and airmen from numerous countries -- not all of them on good terms with each other -- converging here for a humanitarian cause.
Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake may have killed as many as 10,000 people, according to Prime Minister Sushil Koirala.
U.S. Ambassador Peter Bodde welcomed a USAID Disaster Assistance Response team (DART), part of an initial U.S. contribution of $10 million for aid in response to Nepal’s worst earthquake since 1934.
“The government of Nepal is doing very well given their resources and the situation they have to deal with. A quake of this size would challenge any government and they’re a good partner. I met with the prime minister this morning. I offered him all the assistance that may be required and we will ramp up," he said.
The ambassador told VOA News he had earlier in the day met with the Nepali prime minister, pledging that the United States would do whatever is needed to help the landlocked Himalayan nation, one of Asia’s poorest, to recover from the disaster.
Landing at Tribhuvan, Nepal’s only international airport, at 1,300 meters altitude in the Kathmandu Valley is no easy feat, even in the best of times and weather.
It is considered a hazardous approach and there is no instrumentation landing system. Serious accidents are not uncommon.
The airfield, however, has been so choked with evacuation flights and other responding aircraft that they have prevented new planes from landing -- packed with rescue teams and desperately needed food, medicine and water.
Quake overwhelms Nepal
Among the first places some of the Japanese team rescue went was Kasthamandap -- Kathmandu’s namesake -- one of Nepal’s most notable pagodas. There they joined Germany’s search squad.
At least 21 bodies have been recovered from the rubble. Neighborhood shopkeepers say they are certain there are more buried.
Jayanti Shreshtra says she saw two Asian male foreigners snapping photos at the pagoda before it was destroyed by the quake.
“I was returning from the washroom and one man pulled me and shouted ‘run.’ Just at that moment the temple sliced like a cake and entered my shop," she explained.
The scope of the disaster is exemplified by Nepal’s urgent request for 300,000 tents. The United Nations says eight million people have been affected by the quake.
Tents throughout Kathmandu are not only sheltering tens of thousands whose homes have been damaged or destroyed.
They are also refuges of solace where the mostly Hindu population is praying that one of Asia’s poorest nations will have better fortunes ahead.