Runway damage closes Nepal airport as death toll climbs

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Runway damage forced Nepalese authorities to close the main airport Sunday to large aircraft delivering aid to millions of people following the massive earthquake, but UN officials said the overall logistics situation was improving. The death toll climbed to 7,250, including six foreigners and 45 Nepalese found over the weekend on a popular trekking route, said government administrator Gautam Rimal. The main runway was temporarily closed to big planes because of damage. It was built to handle only medium-size jetliners, but not the large military and cargo planes that have been flying in aid supplies, food, medicines, and rescue and humanitarian workers, said Birendra Shrestha, the manager of Tribhuvan International Airport, located on the outskirts of Kathmandu. There have been reports of cracks on the runway and other problems at the only airport capable of handling jetliners. “You’ve got one runway, and you’ve got limited handling facilities, and you’ve got the ongoing commercial flights,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the UN coordinator for Nepal. “You put on top of that massive relief items coming in, the search and rescue teams that has clogged up this airport. And I think once they put better systems in place, I think that will get better.” He said the bottlenecks in aid delivery were slowly disappearing, and the Nepalese government eased customs and other bureaucratic hurdles on humanitarian aid following complaints from the UN. Kai Tabacek, a spokesman for the British charity Oxfam, said the main problem was that Kathmandu airport was too small “to deal with a huge volume of traffic. Of course, there have been some delays, but these have more to do with the challenge of moving large volumes of goods than customs.” The true extent of the damage from the earthquake is still unknown as reports keep filtering in from remote areas, some of which remain entirely cut off. The UN says the quake affected 8.1 million people — more than a quarter of Nepal’s 28 million people. Laxi Dhakal, a Home Ministry official, said hopes of finding survivors had faded dramatically. “Unless they were caught in an air pocket, there is not much possibility,” he said. Among the dead are Bruce and Kathy Macmillan, of St. Albert, Alta., who were trekking in the village of Chyamki in the Langtang region when the earthquake hit. Louise Bentley, Bruce Macmillan’s sister, said the family has been in communication with someone who was with the couple in the area at the time of the earthquake, and that they confirmed the couple had been killed.