Survived: Three pulled alive from rubble in Nepal.
Nepalese officials had abandoned hope
Los Angeles Times, Associated Press
Kathmandu, Nepal — Eight days after Nepal’s earthquake, three survivors were found beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings, officials said Sunday.
An Icelandic Red Cross official said the survivors were found about 12 miles from Chautara in Sindhupalchok district in northeast Nepal, about 40 miles northeast of the capital, Kathmandu.
The survivors reportedly were flown to Kathmandu for medical treatment.
Some Nepalese officials had dismissed chances of finding more survivors after two were found Thursday in Kathmandu. But U.S., Nepalese, Chinese and other search-and-rescue teams continue to comb through rubble for survivors.
Runway damage forced Nepalese authorities to close Tribhuvan International Airport on Sunday to large aircraft delivering aid to millions of people following the massive earthquake, but U.N. officials said the overall logistics situation was improving.
The death toll climbed to 7,276, including six foreigners and 45 Nepalese found during the weekend on a popular trekking route, said government administrator Gautam Rimal. Nepal’s Tourist Police reported that 57 foreigners have been killed in the April 25 quake, and 109 are missing, including 12 Russians and nine Americans.
The airport’s main runway was temporarily closed to big planes because of damage. It was built to handle only medium-size jetliners, 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 the airport, located on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
“You’ve got one runway, and you’ve got limited handling facilities, and you’ve got the ongoing commercial flights,” said Jamie Mcgoldrick, the U.N. coordinator for Nepal. “You put on top of that massive relief items coming in, the search and rescue teams that have 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 U.N. “The government has taken note of some of the concerns that we’ve expressed to them,” he said.
Airport congestion was only the latest complication in the global effort to aid people in the wake of the quake, the impoverished country’s biggest and most destructive in eight decades.
Nepal’s geography of high mountains and difficult road networks “is always going to be a challenge,” Mcgoldrick said, adding that airlifting goods by helicopter “right now is quite limited.”
People in Nepal — both in remote villages and Kathmandu — have complained about not seeing any rescue workers or international aid and about a lack of temporary shelters, with many sleeping out in the open because of fears sparked by the more than 70 aftershocks that have followed the quake.
The true extent of the damage from the earthquake still is unknown as reports keep filtering in from remote areas, some of which remain entirely cut off. The U.N. says the quake affected 8.1 million people — more than a quarter of Nepal’s 28 million people.
Fundraiser:
Pewaukee event raises money for Nepal relief.