KATHMANDU: Powerful aftershocks rocked Nepal on Sunday, panicking survivors of a quake that killed more than 2,400 and triggering new avalanches at Everest base camp, as mass cremations were held in the devastated capital Kathmandu.

Terrified residents, many forced to camp out in the capital after Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude quake reduced buildings to rubble, were jolted by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock that compounded the worst disaster to hit the impoverished Himalayan nation in more than 80 years.

At overstretched hospitals, where medics were treating patients in hastily erected tents, staff were forced to flee buildings for fear of further collapses.

“Electricity has been cut off, communication systems are congested and hospitals are crowded and are running out of room for storing dead bodies,” Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke said.

Climbers reported that the aftershock caused more avalanches at Mount Everest, just after helicopters airlifted to safety those injured when a wall of snow hit base camp on Saturday, killing at least 18 people.

The deadliest disaster in Everest’s history comes almost exactly a year after an avalanche killed 16 sherpa guides, forcing the season to be cancelled, and as around 800 mountaineers were gathered at the start of the new season.

A correspondent who was on assignment at base camp, reported that six helicopters had managed to reach the mountain on Sunday after the weather improved.

The Kathmandu-based National Emergency Operation Centre put the toll in Nepal at 2,430 while around 6,000 more people had been injured.

At least 67 people killed in India and 18 in Tibet region

Officials in India said the toll there now stood at 67, while Chinese state media said 18 people had been killed in the Tibet region.

“We have deployed all our resources for search and rescue,” police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam said. “Helicopters have been sent to remote areas. We are sifting through the rubble where buildings have collapsed to see if we can find anyone.”

The fresh aftershocks forced Kathmandu airport to close for around an hour as air traffic controllers evacuated their centre. Several flights had to be diverted in mid-air.

The country’s mobile phone network was working only sporadically, while large parts of the capital were without electricity.

Correspondents in Kathmandu reported that tremors were felt throughout the day, including one strong aftershock at dawn before the 6.7-magnitude follow-up quake that struck in the afternoon.

The historic nine-storey Dharahara tower, a major tourist attraction, was among the buildings brought down on Saturday. Police said around 150 people were thought to have been in the tower at the time of the disaster, based on ticket sales.

“At least 30 dead bodies have been pulled out. We don’t have a number on the rescued but over 20 injured were helped out,” Bishwa Raj Pokharel, a local police official, said.

“We haven’t finished our work there, rescue work is still continuing. Right now, we are not in a position to estimate how many might be trapped.”

As rescuers sifted through the huge mounds of rubble in the capital, some using bare hands, hospitals were overwhelmed with victims who suffered multiple fractures and trauma. Morgues were overflowing with bodies.

At the city’s oldest Bir Hospital, a correspondent saw grieving relatives trying to swat away flies from around a dozen bodies placed on the floor of the morgue after storage space ran out.

The first mass cremations were held at the Pashupatinath district of Kathmandu, with the smoke from the funeral pyres wafting across a swathe of the city.

Samir Acharya, a doctor at Annapurna Neurological Hospital, said medics were working out of a tent set up in a parking lot to cope with the injured, while some patients were too scared to stay in the building.

A 6.8-magnitude quake hit eastern Nepal in August 1988 killing 721 people, and a magnitude 8.1 quake killed 10,700 people in Nepal and India in 1934.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2015

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