"We Need Help:" Aid scarce in quake-hit Nepal villages

[Lite Beer]

"We Need Help:" Aid scarce in quake-hit Nepal villages
By TODD PITMAN

PAUWATHOK, Nepal (AP) — At the entrance of this destroyed mountain village, a wooden sign stands, cobbled together from debris of homes flattened by Nepal's devastating earthquake. Its message: "WE NEED HELP. PLEASE HELP."

A steep winding road leads up to the ruins of the small village of Pauwathok, perched on a ridge about 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) above sea level. It's just 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Kathmandu, Nepal's capital. But villagers say not one government official, not one soldier has visited since the massive quake struck a week ago, underscoring just how unprepared and overwhelmed Nepal's government has been.

Early Saturday, a convoy of covered trucks approached Pauwathok. The trucks were apparently transporting aid and escorted by Nepalese police carrying automatic weapons. Hungry residents ran toward the road.

The trucks were not stopping.

"Are we invisible to you?!" a voice among the crowd screamed as the trucks rode slowly up a hill and out of sight.

One week after the strongest tremor to hit impoverished Nepal in eight decades, aid has been slow in reaching those who need it most. In many places it has not come at all.

U.N. humanitarian officials said Saturday they are increasingly worried about the spread of disease. They said more helicopters are needed to reach isolated mountain villages like Pauwathok, which were hard to access even before the quake.

The true extent of the damage from the magnitude-7.8 earthquake is still unknown as reports keep filtering in from remote areas, some of which remain entirely cut off. The U.N. has estimated the quake affected 8.1 million people — more than a quarter of Nepal's 28 million people. The government's latest number is 6,841 dead, with little hope of finding survivors.

Nepal has been shaken by more than 70 aftershocks, and its people remain on edge. One brief aftershock Sunday afternoon shook this village's only paved road, triggering screams from residents who began to run, then stopped when the tremor eased.

Pauwathok is located in the district of Sindupalchok, where more deaths have been recorded than anywhere else in Nepal — 2,560, compared to 1,622 in Kathmandu. The U.N. says up to 90 percent of the houses in Sindupalchok have been destroyed.

Rajaram Giri said he was sitting under a large tree when the big quake hit April 25. Pauwakthok was immediately engulfed in clouds of red dust. When it cleared, Giri saw only ruins.

Only a handful of the village's roughly 80 homes remain habitable. Mostly made of brick and mud and sticks, they were either completely leveled or damaged beyond repair. Some families now sleep under makeshift shelters of debris that they constructed from their own ruined homes — torn roofs and boards, whatever was left.

Others sleep under tarpaulins — obtained only after residents sat in the middle of the road Friday and blocked an aid convoy that eventually relinquished 30 of them, said Giri, who took one for his family.

"We only have the clothes on our backs," he said. "The rest has been buried under the rubble."

Volunteers have begun stepping into the void. Late Saturday, Pauwathok's appeal for help was finally answered.

A truck full of rice, noodles and medical supplies pulled up. Everyone crowded round.

The truck had been organized by a teacher who went for help to Kathmandu, where he collected donations from charities and friends. They brought the aid themselves.

"The government has not been able to cater to the needs of everyone, so it's better if everybody can pitch in," said Supral Raj Joshi, who helped bring the aid. "It's not that the government isn't trying, it's that they've not been able to reach everywhere."

Six other civilians, several of whom worked with street kids in Kathmandu, also came to deliver medical aid Saturday.

They dressed the wound of an elderly lady, Tilamaya Bharti, who had lost part of a finger when a stone crushed it during the tremor. They also gave Bharti painkillers — the first she'd had since doctors in a nearby town conducted a hasty amputation last week and sent her away with nothing to ease the pain.

While the situation in Pauwathok is grave, some remote parts of Nepal appear to have suffered even more.

David O'Neill of U.K. International Search and Rescue said a team from his group had driven as far as it could, then walked for hours into six remote villages to assess them. The team reported that the villages had been so badly hit, 80 percent of their inhabitants had died.

"Everything has been flattened," O'Neill said. The people there apparently died not in the original quake, but in a major aftershock the next day, he said.

O'Neill spoke in Chautara, a destroyed town in Sindhupalchok. His team had hoped to reach the remote areas by helicopter, but none were available, so they were returning to Kathmandu.

"We definitely need more helicopters," Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the U.N.'s World Food Program, told The Associated Press in the village of Majuwa, west of the capital. Aid agencies have been using Majuwa as a staging ground to get supplies deeper into mountainous areas.

"This is one of the poorest places on Earth," Cousin said. "If the global community walks away, the people of this country will not receive the assistance that is required for them to rebuild their lives."

That need remains great. Nepal Information Minister Minendra Rijal said the government has supplied only 29,000 tents to 400,000 displaced people.

"The earthquake has caused unimaginable destruction," said Rownak Khan, a U.N. Children's Fund senior official in Nepal. "Hospitals are overflowing, water is scarce, bodies are still buried under the rubble and people are still sleeping in the open. This is a perfect breeding ground for disease."

Medicine, medical equipment, tents and water supplies are needed now, he said.

"We have a small window of time to put in place measures that will keep earthquake-affected children safe from infectious disease outbreaks - a danger that would be exacerbated by the wet and muddy conditions brought on with the rains," Khan said.

Laxi Dhakal, a Nepal Home Ministry official, said hopes of finding survivors had faded. "Unless they were caught in an air pocket, there is not much possibility," he said.

In Jalkeni, a village not far from Pauwathok, the road is lined with mounds of broken wood and stone, the remains of destroyed homes.

On top of one mound sat a woman cradling a young girl. The mound — surrounded by a pile of dusty rocks, a broken TV and shredded clothes — used to be Sunita Shrestha's two-story home.

"No one has come to help us yet," said Shrestha, as the sun beat down. "I don't know if they ever will."

___

Associated Press writers Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu and Katy Daigle in Majuwa, Nepal, contributed to this report.

-- (c) Associated Press 2015-05-03

[NeverSure]

Where the hell is my government, seven days in? India is an ally and would cooperate with airports and staging areas. Where are thousands of helicopters with mid-air refueling and enough supplies of all kinds to ship out a military?

Seven days is a long time too long to go without help.

[Scott]

Here is a link that might give you some ideas about what your gov't is doing:

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-us-troops-aid-nepal-20150502-story.html#page=1

At one point the Nepalese authorities asked that no more people be sent. It now appears that they also have a lot of supplies but can't get them distributed. This is sometimes the nature of relief efforts after disasters.

Coordination is a huge problem once infrastructure is destroyed. Language barriers are also a problem and in some case local laws and customs get in the way.

[NeverSure]

Here is a link that might give you some ideas about what your gov't is doing:

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-us-troops-aid-nepal-20150502-story.html#page=1

At one point the Nepalese authorities asked that no more people be sent. It now appears that they also have a lot of supplies but can't get them distributed. This is sometimes the nature of relief efforts after disasters.

Coordination is a huge problem once infrastructure is destroyed. Language barriers are also a problem and in some case local laws and customs get in the way.

Yeah, I'm wondering about helicopters and mid-air refueling. That's what they need for villages that haven't even been visited yet. They could stage out of India and not need Nepalese resources. People are asking for them. Even before roads were knocked out many villages are hard to get to.

[Scott]

I can't give you a definitive answer about what is going on, but I believe the Office of Foreign Disaster Administration (OFDA) keeps their finger on the pulse of these situations. They are prepared to act very quickly.

Before delivering aid, there still has to be an assessment of what is needed and there has to be cooperation. The military, are of course, some of the first that may be called upon, but these folks know what they are doing and how to do it.

I can't think of any reason that they would dragging their feet -- it's not like there is some checkered history between the US and Nepal -- and and I am sure that once the needs are identified, they will be on the ground and running. They are willing to stay for a long time and help rebuild entire villages, if needed.

I worked under a contract for the OFDA for several years and gained a new understanding and appreciation for the work they do. They are often low key, try to work within the existing systems and try to comply with local customs to rebuild the country the way it was -- in this case, that would mean doing it so that buildings are safer.

Humanitarian assistance can be tricky. It's no good drop water in if they need food and the next villages gets the food and they need water. There are issues of making sure that the right people get the supplies. There is more than one instance of aid trucks being swamped by desperate people and military soldiers accompanying them having to open fire. In some cases, the strongest get all the supplies and the weakest go without.

What the Nepalese gov't asks for, they will probably get. Unfortunately a lot of people are going to show up, but quite a few of them won't bring a shovel, when digging people out is what is needed. It's the nature of the beast.

Some organizations will use this as a means to collect a lot of money and do a lot of grandstanding while not doing a lot of good. Other groups have a lot of experience and are well equipped to deal with these matters.

I don't what to advocate for any particular groups, but in a few places where I worked, Save the Children (which gets a fair amount of bad press) did a good job and the Red Cross was very effective. I also saw groups that managed to mess things up royally.

[NeverSure]

Thanks for the explanation. I get to feeling so bad for those people that I want everything now.

[Scott]

And that, NS, is one of the biggest problems when there is a disaster. We wish we could do more and do it quicker, but sometimes it can't be done.

There will be errors and there will be things that coulda, shoulda, woulda been done differently.

In the end the ones that are really the most helpful are the ones who hang around for the long haul. Villages need to be rebuilt, that includes hospitals, clinics, schools and roads. Decent and reasonably well constructed homes need to be built as well.

[lungbing]

Perhaps if the Nepalese customs department would get their finger out then relief goods stuck at the airport might reach the people it is intended for. The Nepalese government graciously reduced the tax on tarpaulins coming into the country. But a government official said the customs department must still inspect all goods. I wonder if they are similar to another customs department we all know and love?

Still, it gives NGO staff another chance to swan around in their white SUVs, stay at the best hotels and add "Nepal" to their CVs.

[ggt]

Send an urgent email to Mayweather and Pacquiao...they can afford to contribute ten million each and never miss the money...

[canuckamuck]

For every Nepali village on a highway, like the one in the Op, there are several that can only be hiked to. Their chances of seeing aid is even more remote,

I have hiked relief supplies up to high mountain villages there, years ago, I can't imagine what those people are going through now. Life was desperate there in normal times.

[Scott]

This might explain some of the problem:

RT@andylines: Nepal has banned heavy planes from landing at Kathmandu airport because cracks have appeared in runway. 196 ton limit. #NepalQuake

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/822148-thailand-live-sunday-3-may-2015/?p=9365970

[NeverSure]

And that, NS, is one of the biggest problems when there is a disaster. We wish we could do more and do it quicker, but sometimes it can't be done.

There will be errors and there will be things that coulda, shoulda, woulda been done differently.

In the end the ones that are really the most helpful are the ones who hang around for the long haul. Villages need to be rebuilt, that includes hospitals, clinics, schools and roads. Decent and reasonably well constructed homes need to be built as well.

As Lungbing said above, the Nepal government has been outrageous with customs, putting a major bottleneck in the works. They've wanted to tax everything coming in. (According to various news sources.) Here's good news, and I now understand why it's taken so long.

Thanks for all of the explanations.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/05/04/404120296/u-s-marines-arrive-in-nepal-to-aid-earthquake-victims

U.S. Marines Arrive In Nepal To Aid Earthquake Victims

MAY 04, 2015 6:49 AM ET

"Probably the most pressing need is shelter," he said. "We're going to start pushing these shelters out to the most remote areas, so people can get under cover before these monsoons kick in in about six weeks."

Meanwhile, Western nations have been complaining that aid has been slow to reach victims of the quake because of government bureaucracy.

The New York Times reports that despite the emergency, the Nepali government has insisted on following regular customs procedures. The paper reports:"

More at above link.

Edited May 4, 2015 by NeverSure

[Scott]

Sadly, the one thing that gov'ts do well is follow their own burdensome regulations. This is not unique to Nepal.

It's actually sometimes easier to deal with countries with a strong military, because then aid can be from one military to the other and the military has ways of bypassing gov't regulations.