Nepal earthquake: tensions rise over slow pace of aid

19m ago12:31

A risk-management expert tells my colleague Sam Jones that thousands moreNepalese people will die in future earthquakes and the country will slide further back into poverty if the government and the international community do not learn the lessons of Saturday’s disaster. Here’s an extract from Sam’s piece.

Katie Peters, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said that although significant progress had been made in retrofitting schools and hospitals and training people how to respond to earthquakes, more needs to be done to mitigate the effects of future natural disasters.

Peters, who works with Nepalese government on disaster risk, said that failure to invest in “building back better”, improving infrastructure and making sure everyone was as prepared as possible for quakes would prove costly. “There will continue to be a rise in both loss of life and economic loss from disasters,” she said. “That’s the reality – and it will cost more for the international community.”

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27m ago12:24

Some of the latest pictures from Nepal

 Villagers wait in the rain as an aid relief helicopter lands at their remote mountain village of Gumda, near the epicentre of the quake. Photograph: Wally Santana/AP

 Damaged villages of Sindhupalchwok district, 75 kilometres from Kathmandu. More than 1,260 people were killed in the area and 416 injured. Photograph: NARENDRA SHRESTHA/EPA

 Nepalese in Kathmandu protest the slow pace of aid delivery for the earthquake. The protesters numbering about 200 faced off with police and there were minor scuffles but no arrests were made. Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

Updated at 9.25pm AEST

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47m ago12:04

The UK public donated more than £19m to Disasters Emergencies Committee’s Nepal appeal a day after it was launched.

DEC Chief Executive Saleh Saeed said: “People in the UK have, once again, shown their generosity by responding to help those whose lives have been devastated by disaster.”

“The region is hard to access and has thrown up many challenges for emergency relief teams, but aid is now getting through. Our member agencies are scaling up their efforts to provide essentials such as food, clean water, temporary shelter and medical care.”

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53m ago11:58

Beware reports of violence and outbreaks of disease in the aftermath of an earthquake, writes Jonathan Katz, who witnessed first hand how the international media and aid agencies got it so wrong following the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

Writing in the New York Times he says:

There is violence after disasters, just as there is violence every day wherever humans live. But taking a hard look back puts the lie to the idea that societies somehow become less cohesive after a natural shock, at a moment when most people are busy trying to put their lives back in order ...

As for the notion of post-disaster disease outbreaks, epidemiologists have gone looking for evidence of epidemics resulting from calamities such as earthquakes, and they have generally concluded that they don’t happen ...

Nepal is not Haiti, and 2015 is not 2010. Nepal has its own unique concerns, including high mountain passes at risk for avalanches and colder nights than we ever dreamed of in the Caribbean. Cholera, long endemic there, may spike in the coming monsoon season, as it often does. Nepal’s government is trying harder to coordinate the disaster response than Haiti’s did or could; among other things, it is asking for direct financial support online. More than in past disasters, I’ve seen many people on social media encouraging others to donate to local Nepalese organizations who know their country, and who will stay long after the relief phase ends.

Those engaged in the response, whether covering it or participating in it, now have to ask the questions we’ve failed to ask in the past: How exactly did the earthquake affect a given problem? What are the specific goals of the relief effort concerning it? And how will we know if they’ve been met? We don’t know for sure what will come of a relief effort in which everyone is asking those questions, because we’ve never really done it before. But for the people now struggling through their ordeal in the Himalayas, there’s no better time to try.

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1h ago11:40

British national killed

A non-resident British national has been killed in the Nepal earthquake, the Foreign Office has confirmed, PA reports.

On Tuesday Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said his officials were urgently investigating unconfirmed reports of a non-UK resident being killed. 

Updated at 8.54pm AEST

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1h ago11:36

The US embassy in Nepal has told ABC News that more than 500 Americans are still unaccounted for in Nepal.

The Embassy’s Twitter feed says it has accounted for 436 US citizens initially reported as missing.

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1h ago11:25

PM confronted by frustrated survivors

Nepal’s prime minister Sushil Koirala was confronted by survivors desperate for relief deliveries when he visited a hospital in Kathmandu today, writes Ishwar Rauniyar.

Many survivors and their relatives gathered in front of the prime minister to request to water, food and tents. The prime minister pledged to do what he could to provide basic needs, a local radio station reported.

Koirala was visiting visited Tribhuvan University Teaching hospital in Kathmandu to get the update on the crisis. He was accompanied by the chief of the Nepal Army Gaurab Sumsher Rana.

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2h ago11:06

 

Lisa O'Carroll

Nepal will face a secondary crisis involving diseases such as cholera and potentially fatal diarrhoea in children unless water and sanitation and hygiene issue are addressed urgently, an aid agency has warned, writes Lisa O’Carroll.

“In the international community we are all concerned about moving quickly and delivering. There was some unrest here yesterday. People are hungry and concern is mounting about how long this can go on,” said Sean Casey, who is heading up the earthquake response for the International Medical Corps in Kathmandu.

There are no latrines in the camps, he said, calling for clearer leadership.

“There is not a lot of clarity about the priorities and where they lie,” he said.

IMC has scrambled a team of about 40 international and local medical volunteers together since Sunday but Casey said access to the worst-hit areas was a challenge for all aid agencies.

One of its two mobile medical units was “pushing on by foot” in the district of Dhading, close to the quake’s epicentre, because of access issues.

Although it was a race against time to save any quake survivors in the villages, it is also vital to get medical supplies out of the capital, Casey said.

“Even people who have relatively minor injuries, unless they are treated they are at risk of infection. Water and sanitation is also a serious concern for people who are isolated. This area is prone to cholera and we could see disease outbreak,” he said.

Casey visited the town of Gorkha on Sunday and said although it was badly damaged the hospital was functioning.

“The problem is getting to the northern villages, some of which are two days walk under normal circumstances. With landslides everyone is facing access problems,” he said.

The return journey to Kathmandu “took hours and hours” he said. “It was a parking lot with people living the city and there are landslides along the road to India.”

 Nepal military personnel load relief supplies onto a truck at the Gorkha district office. Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/REUTERS

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2h ago10:58

Thousands of earthquake survivors across Nepal have been venting their anger at the government for failing to address their basic needs for food, water and shelter, writes Ishwar Rauniyar.

A group of protestors broke into government offices in Dolakha district.

“Hundreds of people came to the office and vandalised it” said the senior official in the district, Prem Lal Lamichhane.

“We have been requesting for basic tents, food and water, but we haven’t received anything from the centre, so how can we provide help,” he said.

Lamichhane said the protesters did not have a place to sleep, and lack food and drinking water.

Sasmita Shrestha, 24, in Chautara of Sindhupalchowk district said people were very angry with the government. “None of the government bodies or the aid agencies have visited us to provide relief. We are still living in the open.”

She said there were chaotic scenes after the first relief packages were brought into government offices.

“It’s true we haven’t been able to reach to all the places,” said Krishna Prasad Gyawali, a top bureaucrat in the district

There are similar problems in Lalitpur district in Kathmandu valley, according to the chief district officer Yadav Koirala. He said dozens of people have gathered in the goverment offices to demand more aid.

 Nepalese riot police officials stand alert on a street in Kathmandu as earthquake survivors desperate to leave the Nepalese capital show their anger after promised special bus services failed to materialise. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

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2h ago10:42

The Nepalese government’s promise of free bus rides out of Kathmandu continues to backfire as those frustrated at queue for places vent their anger at the government.

Reuters reports that 200 Nepalis protested outside parliament, demanding the government increase the number of buses going to the interior hills and improve distribution of aid.

 Nepalese police push back residents who began protesting after waiting for hours in line to board buses back to other towns and villages from Kathmandu. Photograph: Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/apr/29/nepal-earthquake-humanitarian-crisis-engulfing-8-million-people-rolling-report