Search for helicopter continues
HUNDREDS of Nepali troops searched for a missing US Marine helicopter with eight people on board yesterday, a day after the second powerful earthquake in less than three weeks killed scores and sent panicked residents rushing out of buildings.
The Himalayan nation is still reeling from last month’s devastating quake that killed more than 8 000 people and injured close to 20 000.
The helicopter was delivering aid in Dolakha, one of the districts hit hardest by both quakes, on Tuesday when it went missing with six Marines and two Nepali troops on board.
In the district capital of Charikot, relief and military helicopters brought people who had been wounded when buildings collapsed and landslides struck in outlying hamlets to an open-air clinic, where they were treated on bloodied tarpaulins.
On one flight was Uttav Nepali from Singati village, where there was a large landslide under which authorities believed people were still buried. He said only a handful of houses were left standing.
“I was outside when the quake struck. Bricks and the top floor of my shop fell down and crushed my arm and back,” Nepali said, as he sat among villagers from other communities and waited to find out if he was going to Kathmandu for treatment.
The helicopters alternated between evacuating and helping to look for the Marine Corps UH-1Y “Huey” helicopter, which lost radio contact after its crew was heard talking about fuel problems.
A Nepali military official said it appeared that the helicopter might have come down in one of the rivers that snaked through valleys in Dolakha district east of the capital, Kathmandu.
Six other helicopters joined hundreds of ground troops in the search for the missing aircraft.
“The info we have is that it is down in one of the rivers, but none of the choppers has seen it yet,” said Major Rajan Dahal, the second-in-command of the Barda Bahadur Battalion, from Charikot.
Sightings
“There are 400-plus of our ground troops looking for it also. By this evening, we might get it,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Marines said there had been no confirmed sightings of the helicopter, and that she did not have information that it had landed in a river. She said relief operations continued, but in a diminished capacity while the search was on.
“Primarily we want to make sure that we get all our service members and the Nepalese service members home safely,” said public affairs officer Cassandra Gesecki.
Nepal Home Ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dahal said he feared that the search was diverting resources from relief and rescue operations.
“The work of sending relief and rescuing the injured people to hospitals has been delayed due to this,” he said. – Reuters