A Nepalese woman brushes her teeth next to quake damaged houses in Bhaktapur
Nepal has been overwhelmed by its second massive earthquake in less than three weeks, its prime minister said yesterday as he visited this normally placid foothills town, now a center for frightened villagers desperate for government help.
Thousands of people now crowd the streets of Charikot, the administrative center of the isolated district hit hardest by Tuesday’s magnitude-7.3 quake, which killed at least 96 people and injured more than 2,300. The magnitude-7.8 earthquake that hit April 25 killed more than 8,150 people, injured tens of thousands more and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
“After the first quake, we were not prepared for a second one so big,” Prime Minister Sushil Koirala told reporters after arriving in Charikot by helicopter.
He said the coming monsoon rains now loomed large, with hundreds of thousands of people left homeless.
“We need tents. Our people need shelter. With the rainy season, it will be difficult for people to survive in the open,” he said.
Nearly everyone is too afraid to sleep indoors in Charikot, which is filling with people from surrounding areas seeking help. Aftershocks are keeping them on edge. Charikot is 140 kilometers north of Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital.
Meanwhile the search continued yesterday for a U.S. Marine helicopter carrying six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers. It disappeared Tuesday while delivering aid in the country’s northeast.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the U.S. aerial search for the helicopter had found “nothing of note.”
He said the U.S. has redirected some satellites to assist in the search. Officials in Kathmandu said the search was focused on the Sunkhani area, nearly 80 kilometers northeast of the capital.
Tuesday’s quake was less powerful than the one in April and shook a smaller, less populated area. It was centered between Kathmandu and Mount Everest, and was southeast of last month’s earthquake. It hit hardest in deeply rural parts of the Himalayan foothills, hammering many villages reached only by hiking trails and causing road-blocking landslides. Nirmala George, Charikot, AP
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