MORE TEARS FOR NEPAL

Quake hits the day aid arrives

ON Tuesday night Tasmanian Tents4Peace founder Anna Crotty was shedding tears of joy and pride as she looked at photographs of shelter and supplies being distributed to 1500 Nepalese in the remote Kathmandu hill villages of Gumba Gabisa, Kyangshing and Penbathang.

Just hours later as she learned the villages had been at the epicentre of a second quake, Ms Crotty’s tears were of a different kind.

‘‘I just couldn’t stop thinking what the hell do we do now,’’ she said.

‘‘Those villagers hadn’t received any aid until we reached them and they were just so grateful and relieved, but now we have no way of knowing what their situation is and it is just overwhelming to think they likely no longer even have the assistance we were able to get to them.’’

Ms Crotty said even before the second earthquake the situation in Nepal, and particularly in remote rural areas, was worse than Australians realised.

‘‘There is a bit of a misconception that things are OK there now but the bigger aid organisations are having trouble getting help through and as we discovered on Tuesday there are still thousands and thousands of people who have not received any help at all,’’ Ms Crotty said.

She said Tents4Peace was going to increase its efforts to provide the immediate aid it specialises in by using local people on the ground.

‘‘Our original goal was to raise enough money to distribute 500 tents and supplies we had waiting on the Indian border,’’ she said.

‘‘So far we have raised about $50,000 and been able to deliver 800 tents but we have now sourced an additional 500 tents and need to raise the funds to pay for them.

‘‘People are donating generously to the big aid organisations and that’s great but we need help to be able to provide immediate emergency shelter for these people until those organisations can get there.’’

Meanwhile, Tasmania’s Rotary District is also intensifying its fundraising efforts in the wake of the second earthquake.

The district, which has close ties to the Rotary Club of Hetauda, was aiming to raise $250,000 and District Governor Ken Moore said about $80,000 had been received so far.

‘‘We are now going to be pushing harder as obviously there is an increasing need for emergency relief,’’ Mr Moore said.