JOIN USHit by severe shortage of food, water, electricity and medicines, and buffeted by fear, tens of thousands of people are out in the open here as quake-hit Nepal on Monday desperately sought international aid.
Thousands who were tired of waiting for help fled capital Kathmandu for the surrounding plains.
United Nations agencies say Nepal is running out of water and food and nearly one million children urgently need humanitarian assistance as they were particularly vulnerable.
Fuel and medicines were also in short supply. The picture was the same in suburbs of Kathmandu and in other rural areas.
Nepal’s top bureaucrat Leela Mani Paudel said the immediate and big challenge was relief. “We urge foreign countries to give us special relief materials and medical teams. We are really desperate for more foreign expertise to pull through this crisis,” he said.
On Monday, thousands streamed out of Kathmandu. Roads leading from the city were jammed with people, some carrying babies, trying to climb onto buses or hitch rides aboard cars and trucks to the plains. Long queues had formed at the airport.
“We are escaping,” said Krishna Muktari, who runs a small grocery store in Kathmandu, standing at a road intersection.
Armed with modern equipment, dumpers, earth movers and aided by sniffer dogs, disaster relief workers were trying to locate possible survivors against fading hope.
The quake that flattened homes and buildings and the subsequent powerful aftershocks forced people to live in the open under plastic tents, barely shielding them from the cold and rain that pounded the city on Sunday night.
The blocked roads, downed power lines and overcrowded hospitals along with fresh tremors are hampering rescue efforts to locate survivors.
By Monday, the toll crossed 4,000 and reports trickling in from remote areas suggested it would rise significantly. A senior interior ministry official said the toll could reach as much as 5,000, in the worse such disaster in Nepal since 1934, when 8,500 people were killed.
Officials and aid agencies have warned that casualties could rise as rescue teams reach remote mountainous areas of western Nepal.
“Villages are routinely affected by landslides, and it is not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried,” aid agency “World Vision” spokesman Matt Darvas said.
Mass cremations are being held here continuously. As the death toll rises, the authorities are working on disposing of the bodies quickly to prevent a health hazard.
High in the Himalayas, hundreds of climbers were staying put at Mt Everest base camp, where a huge avalanche after the earthquake killed 17 people in the single worst disaster to hit the world’s highest mountain. More than 700 personnel drawn from the National Disaster Response Force have been deployed by India.
India has mounted a major rescue and rehabilitation effort, deploying 13 military aircraft which carried field hospitals, medicines, blankets, 50 tonnes of water and other materials.
A senior-level inter-ministerial team from India has arrived here to assess how it can assist in the relief operations.