KATHMANDU, Nepal — The rescue chopper had been delayed more than two hours by weather, and when it landed, doctors were quick to pull out an elderly woman, face caked by blood. She looked at them and asked, “Where have I come?”
Doctors told Ratna Kumari Shreshta that she was at a military hospital in Kathmandu, about 50 miles from her home in Sind hupalchowk. Three days after Saturday’s earthquake, she had been brought to safety, as rescuers were extending their reach to Nepal’s remote villages and finding scenes of utter devastation and increasingly distraught survivors.
Images of Sindhupalchowk, and descriptions by people who had seen it, portrayed it as thoroughly destroyed, its simple mud brick houses flattened, heaps of rubble covering human corpses and livestock, and survivors dazed and wounded.
“No houses left, no houses left. Everything is finished,” Shreshta wailed as doctors took her to the triage center.
Rain descended Tuesday on the troubled country once again, prompting landslides and complicating efforts of rescuers to reach the harder-hit districts in the mountains outside Kathmandu, where whole villages had been laid waste by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake.
The death toll continued to mount, more than 5,000 and counting, according to Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs. Nearly 11,000 have been injured, and more than 450,000 people are said to be displaced from their homes.
In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said government agencies are being deployed in rescue and relief efforts. But he did not provide any concrete plans or policies for relief work and reconstruction efforts.
“The government will learn from its weaknesses as we continue to find ways to deal with this devastation,” Koirala said. “This tragedy has taught us that we need organizational management in natural disaster management.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development has sent a disaster response team of 130 humanitarian and search and rescue workers, and the U.S. has pledged $10 million in relief assistance. More than a dozen other countries have pledged assistance or sent aid, including neighbors India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as the European Union and Israel.
Some good news: Climbers who had been stranded on Mount Everest were all rescued. Gordon Janow, director of programs for the Seattle-based trekking company Alpine Ascents International, said about 100 remaining climbers on the side of the mountain after Saturday’s avalanche were ferried by a small helicopter to safety. Other climbers, on the Chinese side of the mountain, are unable to leave because of bad roads.
Teams attempting to climb the north side of Everest, the Tibet side, were called back to basecamp during the weekend and were holding discussions with Chinese officials about whether any summit attempts will be possible in the remaining weeks of the spring climbing season, according to Adrian Ballinger, a guide for the Olympic Valley, Calif.-based Alpenglow Expeditions.
A spokesman for the Nepalese Army, Brigadier General Jagadish Chandra Pokharel, said the military was still in the search-and-rescue part of the mammoth post-quake operation and was reluctant to give up hope of finding survivors.
“There’s still potential to save lives,” said Bill Berger, the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team leader in Nepal. “Everybody’s moving with all deliberate speed.”
