KATHMANDU, Nepal – Fresh croissants emerged from a popular bakery and were quickly snapped up. Farmers delivered fresh produce, and lines disappeared at gasoline stations. Slowly, life edged back toward a semblance of normal in Nepal’s quake-hit capital Friday as residents packed up tents and moved indoors.
As rescue workers continued to comb the rubble in Kathmandu for survivors, the government said it was giving the equivalent of $1,000 to families of each victim killed in Saturday’s earthquake and another $400 for funeral costs, according to state-run Nepal Radio.
The death toll from the mammoth quake climbed to 6,260, police said, including those who died in an avalanche on Mount Everest, plus more than 60 elsewhere in the region. The city got a lift Thursday when two survivors, including a 15-year-old boy, were rescued after being buried in debris for five days.
Although poorer sections of the city remained strewn with collapsed buildings, there were visibly fewer tents standing in a central part of Kathmandu that had been packed with people in the first few days after the magnitude-7.8 quake hit amid repeated aftershocks.
More than 130,000 houses were reportedly destroyed, according to the UN humanitarian office. Its chief, Valerie Amos, landed in Nepal for a three-day visit to meet victims and local leaders.
Amos told reporters there were “immense logistical challenges” for aid workers trying to get aid to isolated, mountainside villages where helicopters can’t land and roads have often been destroyed.
In the past 48 hours, the UN Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, has delivered nearly 30 metric tons of supplies, including tents, water purification tablets and first aid and hygiene kits.
Nepal appealed to international donors on Friday to send more tents and tarpaulins, along with grain, salt and sugar.
“We have received things like tuna fish and mayonnaise. What good are those things for us? We need grains, salt and sugar,” Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said.
Information Minister Minedra Risal said Nepal immediately needs 400,000 tents but so far has only been able to provide 29,000 to people in need.
A European Union official said about 1,000 people from Europe are still unaccounted for and had not reached out to their embassies since the earthquake struck.
EU Ambassador to Nepal Rensje Teerink told reporters Friday that “of course doesn’t mean they are dead. It just means they haven’t reported back.”
Most of the people came as tourists and trekkers, and many do not register with their embassies.
A group of Nepal’s Gurkhas serving the British army have rushed back home to help their quake-hit countrymen get clean drinking water. The soldiers from the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers Unit on Thursday set up a portable water purification unit on the Kathmandu grounds of the old royal palace.
“I am just glad I could serve my countrymen when they really needed something so necessary like clean drinking water,” said Cpl. Bhesh Gurung, 34. “I have been away for 13 years serving in a foreign land and finally I can do something for my motherland.”
Associated Press writer Cara Anna at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Government may let Everest climbs resume
KATHMANDU, Nepal – Despite a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake that triggered a landslide that killed 19 people at Everest base camp, government and trekking officials in Nepal said that expeditions to summit Mount Everest may resume if climbers decide to go ahead.
“The route damaged by the avalanche and the ropes can be fixed by next week,” Tulsi Prasad Gautam, chief of Nepal’s Tourism Department said, adding there was still time left to attempt to scale the peak. Bad weather normally ends the Everest summit season in mid-to-end May.
The climbers and Sherpas who were attempting to summit from the north face of the mountain, in Tibet, have already packed their gear and left after Chinese authorities closed all climbing for the spring season.
But in Nepal, Gautam said, “the time for the expedition teams can be extended to June if necessary. Most of the teams are still in the region and many are still undecided if they are going to abandon.”
Several Sherpa guides are willing to go back to work if the expeditions resume.
Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, the umbrella body of mountaineering agencies and climbers in Nepal, said some expeditions are still debating what to do.
It was not clear how many teams had decided to quit or stay back on the mountain. Tshering was more pessimistic than the tourism official about their prospects.
“It does look like it is going to be difficult for the expeditions that decide to continue. The route above the base camp has been destroyed by the avalanche,” Tshering said.
“The future of the Everest climb this season is quite uncertain,” he said, adding that Sherpas were worried the season may be over.
Despite the terrible dangers of their jobs – a year rarely passes without at least one death on Everest – the Sherpas, once among the poorest and most isolated people of Nepal, also now have schools, cellphones and their own middle class.
All that is the result of the economy of Mount Everest, which brings tens of millions of dollars to Nepal every year.
