The depth of the natural calamity that hit parts of Nepal on Friday night can be gauged from the fact that rescuers have been attempting to find survivors by digging through the rubble of collapsed houses with their fingers.
More than 4,000 houses collapsed in Jajarkot and Rukum districts, the two worst affected areas as the most powerful earthquake in eight years, one of three felt in the space of 30 days, had Nepal scrambling to mount rescue and relief work, rushing tents, food, and medicine.
Most survivors have been sleeping in the open due to fear of aftershocks affecting what is left of their houses, which being built on slopes in mountainous areas, can hardly be earthquake resistant, even if some of them were made of concrete rather than logs placed on rocks. Many others have had their houses devastated by the temblor.
Shifting the survivors to hospitals in the foothills was bound to be onerous considering the topography. Some have been airlifted to hospitals in India for emergency care. India too felt the quake with buildings shaking New Delhi and the NCR Region, 800 km away, besides places in Bihar closer to the Himalayan kingdom.
While the Prime Minister was duty-bound to fly by helicopter to near the affected area, the Army is bearing the brunt of rescue work, with the soldiers hampered because much of the affected region is accessible only by foot and the few inking roads have also been blocked by landslides.
The memories of 2015 may have come flooding back to Nepalis as that nation’s worst ever earthquake, at a monstrous 7.8 on the quake scale, killed at least 9,000 people and injured 22,000 while leaving many more homeless. Also, this is the third time in a space of 30 days has a temblor struck Nepal, suggesting a deadly pattern.
The frequency of earthquakes and their hitting remote regions in Afghanistan and now Nepal have added considerably to the death toll recently. While very little can be done in the face of nature’s fury, what is galling is the poor and the underprivileged are the ones worst hit by these tragedies as they do not have the wherewithal to construct homes that can withstand earthquakes.
