Nepal Quake 7.8 - Kills more than 1,500 people 25th April 2015

[JennyLeez]

Nepal quake, killed more than 1,500 people as it tore through large parts of Nepal, toppling office blocks and towers in Kathmandu and triggering a deadly avalanche at Everest base camp.

Officials said at least 1,170 people are known to have died in Nepal, making it the quake-prone Himalayan nation's worst disaster in more than 80 years.

But the final toll from the 7.8 magnitude quake could be much higher, and dozens more people were reported killed in neighbouring India and China.

Locals and tourists ferreted through mounds of debris in search of survivors. Cheers rose from the piles when people were found alive, but mostly bodies turned up. The injured wound up being treated outside overflowing hospitals, where crowds of people gathered looking for relatives.

Residents, terrorized by a seemingly endless series of aftershocks, huddled in the cold rain overnight for safety. Dozens of bodies were pulled from the nine-story Dharahara tower that came crashing down during the quake. At least 12 bodies were evacuated from a Mount Everest base camp hit by avalanches.

USGS

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20002926#general_summary

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/68053521/nepal-earthquake-over-1000-dead-after-magnitude-78-earthquake-hits

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[JennyLeez]

UPdate:

Rescuers are digging with their bare hands as bodies pile up in Nepal after an earthquake devastated the heavily crowded Kathmandu valley, killing at least 1,900, and triggered a deadly avalanche on Mt Everest.

Army officer Santosh Nepal led a group of rescuers that worked all night to open a passage into a collapsed building in the capital of Kathmandu. They had to use pick axes because bulldozers could not get through the ancient city's narrow streets.

"We believe there are still people trapped inside," he told Reuters, pointing at concrete debris and twisted reinforcement rods that was once a three-storey residential building.

More:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/68053521/nepal-earthquake-1900-dead-frantic-search-for-survivors

[Martin4Jay]

So sad but we have to respect mother earth the way it happens (peace)

[JennyLeez]

Source: cnn.com

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN)
They dug through rubble, looking for survivors but usually finding bodies. At night, they slept in open fields in the frigid night air. Food and clean water became rarities, uncertainty and fear constants.

On Sunday, Nepal began coming to terms with the death and devastation left by earthquakes and aftershocks. At least 2,430 people died in Nepal alone, and that number is sure to climb. Counting fatalities in India and China, more than 2,500 were killed.

The damage was everywhere. Stunned residents wandered the streets of Kathmandu, the capital city of 3 million people that's now the focus of world disaster relief efforts. They dug through piles of rubble where their homes once stood, seeking pieces of their former lives and, possibly, family members. Many injured were treated outside overflowing hospitals, where crowds of people gathered looking for relatives.

One of the world's most scenic spots became a panorama of devastation in minutes.

More:
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/26/asia/nepal-earthquake/index.html

bbc.co.nz
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32475030

stuff.co.nz
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/68061957/strong-67-aftershock-rocks-nepal

New Zealand will commit an initial $1 million in humanitarian aid to earthquake ravaged Nepal, Prime Minister John Key says.

Urban Search And Rescue (USAR) experts have been offered to Nepal, but for the time being crews are deploying from neighbouring countries.

[JennyLeez]

Update:

The UN has launched a $415m (£270m) urgent appeal to help estimated 8 million people affected by the earthquake over the next three months.

Death Toll stands at around 5,500 with bodies being dug up daily.

An estimate 2.8 million people have been displaced by the earthquake, as hundreds of thousands of people are afraid to return to their homes.

More than 70,000 houses have been destroyed, a figure that is expected to rise.

Only 14 survivors have been saved from the rubble.

Fuel is urgently needed to pump ground water and maintain hospital services.

Rain and thunder are forecast for the next 10 days ahead of monsoon season from June to September.

Hospitals capacity has been overwhelmed forcing many people to be treated on roads. It said: “Managing dead bodies has been challenging and surgical facilities are overwhelmed. Many hospitals near Kathmandu have reportedly run out of medicines. Diarrhoea is already an issue in the Kathmandu valley.”

An estimated 4.2 million people are in urgent need of water, sanitation and hygiene support.

Some 3.5 million people need food assistance, including 1.4 million in need of priority assistance.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/29/asia/nepal-earthquake/

[JennyLeez]

Update 8th May 2015.

Kathmandu, May 8 (IANS) The toll in the devastating earthquake on April 25 in Nepal climbed to 7,885 on Friday, according to the country's ministry of home affairs .

The ministry, in a press release, said a total of 17,803 people were injured in the quake, Xinhua news agency reported.

The release further said a total number of 288,798 private and 10,790 public buildings were totally destroyed in the quake.

[JennyLeez]

At least 4 dead after another powerful earthquake hits Nepal.

A new powerful earthquake convulsed the traumatized nation of Nepal on Tuesday, killing at least four people.
The shock waves rippled out from a remote area of eastern Nepal, near the border with China, leveling buildings already damaged by the devastating quake that killed thousands of people two and a half weeks ago.

The magnitude 7.3 earthquake Tuesday struck at a depth of about 15 kilometers (9 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said, slightly revising its earlier estimates.
The earthquake shook a country still picking up the pieces from the magnitude 7.8 quake that hit central Nepal on April 25, killing more than 8,000 people.

The epicenter of the new earthquake was about 75 kilometers east of Kathmandu, the Nepali capital where many buildings were destroyed in the earlier quake.

The four deaths were reported in the town of Chautara, about 35 kilometers east of Kathmandu, said Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.

[JennyLeez]

Hundreds feared dead as another strong earthquake strikes devastated Nepal.

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.
Live Nepal earthquake: US helicopter reported missing as dozens reported dead – live
A second powerful earthquake to hit Nepal has killed at least 42 people and injured more than a thousand, as US helicopter goes missing

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 last 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.

Source:
News, sport and opinion from the Guardian's US edition | The Guardian

[JennyLeez]

It is hard for us down here to conceive the devastation.
So so much damage, so so much heart ache.
Below are stories from those surviving lifted from the guardian.com.

Just how much more bad news can one country take?

Shyam Balami cannot even contemplate the question when I find him sitting in a wheelchair outside Kathmandu’s teaching hospital.

His house, in a village in Nuwakot, in the foothills of the Himalayas outside Nepal’s capital, was destroyed in the last earthquake – or the “Great Quake” as Nepalese media has started calling it. He thought he had nothing left to lose. Only, it turns out, he was wrong. When a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck on Tuesday, he was in the temporary shack he had painstakingly built out of salvaged materials to provide some sort of basic shelter for his wife and two children. It collapsed around him leaving his right leg shattered.
Dozens killed as devastated Nepal suffers another strong earthquake

He’s not so much resigned as numb. “I don’t feel scared any more,” he says. “I have nothing left to lose.”

There are so many cruelties to the latest disaster: that the districts hit so badly last time have been hit again. That it’s the poorest, in remote rural areas, who can least afford it, who will suffer most. That circumstances that were already dire and desperate for so many people, have just got that little bit worse.

Or a lot worse, for some. Just off Durbar Square in Kathmandu, where another large chunk fell off the already half-collapsed Rana Palace, Sita Basnyet, 43, had been cooking when the quake struck. She ran out of the four-storey building, in which she lives, to see a house collapsing across the street and when I find her she’s sitting outside with her two children. “I have no idea where I will sleep tonight,” she says. “None.” She runs a street stall and rents a room but it was badly damaged in the last quake and it’s too dangerous to sleep in now.

Like many people who live in Kathmandu, her relatives live in the countryside in a village where she grew up. In her case Dolakha, the area that looks to have been worst affected and where both her parents and her parents-in-law still live. Both their houses are gone, she says. “My parents’ house was destroyed in the last quake. They were sleeping in the animal shed but now that’s gone too.”

There were about 300 houses in the village and 100 had been left standing – damaged, but standing – “and now they’ve gone too. Everything’s gone”.

Worse, her parents have told her there are “many, many people” injured in the next village.

The situation for so many people is beyond hopeless.

Nobody has any money to rebuild. Nobody has even the faintest sort of plan. How can you, without money, says Sita Basnyet.

What do you think you will do, in terms of the future, I ask her, and the crowd that has gathered around us erupts into laughter.

She throws her hands in the air and guffaws at the sheer stupidity of the question. “In terms of the future, I have no idea. I hope that God will take care of us. But to be honest, if there’s another earthquake we would rather be taken by God than left with this. Really, if it happens again, I pray God will take me.”

It’s taken so long for even the most rudimentary relief supplies to reach most areas that most people despair of there ever being any real aid. “Will this bring help for us?” she asks motioning at my notepad and I tell her that the British public – not the government - has sent more than £50m to help Nepal.

 “It will never come to us. The politicians will get fat. They will repair their homes and send their children to private schools and none of it will come down to us. That is how it is. We all know that,” she says. I try to say that I don’t think it will be the case with this, but she interrupts me. “No. This is how it is,” she says.

In Dhunche on Tuesday, the gateway to the devastated Langtang region, tarpaulins bearing union jacks and UKAid had only just arrived more than two weeks after the 7.8-magnitude quake. Most people have realised that the only help they’re likely to get is if they help themselves. It’s family and friends and kind-hearted strangers who have been mobilising for the last two weeks, fundraising, and gathering information and trying to get help to where it’s needed most. Last Sunday, I wrote about how one of the groups, based at a B&B called the Yellow House, had taken supplies out to the village of a man, Nakul Khadka, who I met working in the laundry of my Kathmandu hotel.

I went with him to see his parents’ and brothers’ devastated homes in Sindhupalchok and when I look at the map, I see that their village is terrifyingly close to the epicentre. I find Nakul pacing the hotel garden unable to get a call through.

Later he comes and finds me: “Family safe. All remaining houses gone. Nothing left.”