101-year-old rescued after Nepal quake as fears grow in rural areas

KATHMANDU, Nepal – Rescuers have pulled a 101-year-old man alive from his ruined home a week after Nepal’s earthquake claimed at least 7,200 lives, as the government warned Sunday, May 3, the death toll will climb “much higher.”

Funchu Tamang was rescued on Saturday, May 2, from the rubble of his house with only minor injuries to his ankle and hand, after the quake ripped through the impoverished country on April 25.

“He was brought to the district hospital in a helicopter. His condition is stable,” local police officer Arun Kumar Singh told Agence France-Presse from Nuwakot district, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu.

Police also pulled 3 women alive from under rubble on Sunday in Sindhupalchowk, one of the worst-hit districts, although it was not immediately clear how long they had been trapped.

The rescues were rare good news for the devastated country after officials on Saturday ruled out finding more survivors buried in the ruins and the focus shifted to trying to deliver aid to thousands in remote Himalayan areas. 

Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said the death toll was likely to jump once relief teams reached mountain villages flattened in the worst quake to hit the nation in more than 80 years. 

“There are still villages where we know that all houses have been destroyed, but have not yet been able to reach,” Mahat said in a statement. 

“The aftershocks have not receded and we expect the final casualty numbers to climb much higher,” the minister said, as he appealed for hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign donations to help rebuild the country. 

The 7.8-magnitude quake wreaked a trail of death and destruction, reducing much of the capital Kathmandu to rubble and triggering a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.

In the worst-hit districts of Gorkha and Sindhupalchowk, almost 90% of the mostly stone and mud homes have been destroyed, the United Nations said in its latest situation report.

US aircraft arrive 

“Our priority now is really to try to reach those people (in remote areas), get immediate assistance to them,” the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos said.

The relief effort received a boost late Sunday when a United States Air Force C-17 aircraft and 4 tilt-rotor Ospreys landed in Kathmandu.

“They’re going to make an immediate difference,” US Brigadier General Paul Kennedy said.

“We’ve got search and rescue teams waiting to go out to the remote areas. We’ve got relief supplies, especially shelters. Most people don’t understand that a shelter is the most pressing need, so we’re going to take these things out starting tomorrow morning,” he added.

International planes loaded with relief supplies have poured into landlocked Nepal, but there have been numerous reports of many getting stuck at Kathmandu’s small airport and customs officials stopping trucks filled with aid from crossing into the country from neighboring India.

Amos had said she was worried that tons of foreign aid was being held up by red tape.

“I was extremely concerned to hear reports that customs was taking such a long time,” Amos told Agence France-Presse on Saturday, saying she had asked Prime Minister Sushil Koirala to speed up customs clearance for aid materials.

“He has undertaken to ensure that happens, so I hope that from now we will see an improvement in those administrative issues.”

Death toll hits 7,250 

Tribhuvan International Airport has been closed to heavy planes over concern about the condition of the single runway after the quake and a series of strong aftershocks, said Birendra Prasad Shrestha, the airport’s manager.

“We have issued a notice saying that aircraft with a total weight exceeding 196 tons will not be allowed to land at Kathmandu airport,” Shrestha told Agence France-Presse. 

“There are no visible cracks in the runway but there have been so many tremors recently that we have to take precautions. We don’t know what’s happening below the surface,” she said.

“This runway is the only lifeline for Kathmandu. If it goes, everything goes.”

The death toll from the disaster has hit 7,250, according to the Emergency Operations Center, with more than 14,000 injured. More than 100 were also killed in India and China.

Fifty-one bodies, including those of 6 foreigners, have been found in the popular Langtang trekking region hit by a quake-triggered avalanche.

“We estimate that about 100 foreigners might still be missing in the area,” said senior local official Uddav Prasad Bhattarai.

“Our priority was to get the survivors out. We rescued over 350 people, about a half of them were tourists or guides,” he told Agence France-Presse in Rasuwa district that includes Langtang, north of Kathmandu.

In the worst-hit villages, whose roads are blocked by debris, providing shelter is a priority, the UN’s situation report said, while 3 million people throughout the country need food.

Some 200 Chinese police and engineers were crossing the border from Tibet into Nepal to work on reopening a main road between the two countries, China’s state media said. – Paavam Mathema, AFP/Rappler.com