What had been dreaded the most has happened. The Big Earthquake like that of 82 years ago struck at about noon on Saturday, and everything has been a trail of death and devastation, in some three dozen places across the country. The full details of the loss of lives and property, including priceless ancient religious and cultural heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley, may take a few weeks to come out, as the information available so far may be called only preliminary. At various places, people have been lying trapped in the structures damaged by the tremors, or buried underneath heaps of debris, and there is no accounting of physical damage in financial terms. The official figures of death have reached very close to 3,800, with thousands more injured, including those maimed, and thousands of people have been rendered homeless; most of them have not been able to salvage few belongings even to meet the very basic human needs. As of now, the largest death toll comes from Kathmandu, with Bhaktapur, Lalitpur, Kavre, Nuwakot, Dhading, Sindhupalchowk, Rasuwa, Gorkha and Makwanpur, Sindhuli and Solukhumbu, and Dolakha in that order, with several other districts too suffering from death and destruction in various degrees.

Despite the government’s best efforts, perhaps because of problems of ill-preparedness and lack of proper coordination, there are important areas needing more attention: to rescue trapped people and provide relief to the affected without any delay. While rescue and relief operations have yet to reach a number of people in the Kathmandu Valley, the situation in the outlying districts is even worse. Friendly governments have already sent in a lot of relief materials and rescue teams with equipment, with promises of further assistance, but their immediate distribution to the affected areas and people needs to be speeded up.

To further facilitate relief operations and help bring the situation to normal, it is urgent to fully reopen the disrupted services, such as supply of water, electricity and telecommunication services, and to repair the damaged highways and roads on war footing. Reports of artificial shortages of essential goods and charging of exorbitant prices for them have been coming in from various places. All necessary measures should be taken to keep the smooth supply of goods and services. It should also be seen that such essential services as medicines are available at all places and all hours. Those rendered homeless also need to be sheltered, and the victims or their families need immediate financial assistance. Beyond that, the government is expected to come out with a fair and practical plan of action for the victims, as well as for the restoration of our priceless religious and cultural heritages. The political parties owe it to the people that they do not play politics even in the distribution of relief materials, as such narrow-mindedness would harm the interests of the really needy, and the government should see to it that irregularities do not occur at any stage and level, or they are kept to a negligible minimum, in the utilization of money and materials meant for the victims or their families.

Unprepared

The disaster experts had earlier warned that the Kathmandu Valley would suffer the most if a major earthquake like the one in 1934 occurs in the near future. They had warned that around 30 percent of the buildings, temples, monuments and old structures would collapse and a large number of people will perish being buried under the man-made structures. It was warned that the only international airport and surface routes linking the valley would also be damaged in case of a jolt of seven Richter scale.

Luckily, the Tribhuvan International Airport and the highways linking the capital were intact when Saturday’s earthquake whose epicenter was in Gorkha’s Barpak area struck the Valley and surrounding hilly districts. The government was well aware of the fact that major humanitarian crisis would arise in case of a major earthquake. But the government appeared to be unprepared for coping with the disaster as it issued a call to the international community for support after the earthquake. The government response that it could not anticipate such a natural disaster is irresponsible.