Workers: Aid not reaching Nepal villages

Food, shelter in short supply

Damaged buildings lean to their sides in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, April 27, 2015. A strong magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal's capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley on Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)
Damaged buildings lean to their sides in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, April 27, 2015. A strong magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal's capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley on Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)

KATHMANDU, Nepal -- As the death toll from Nepal's devastating earthquake climbed past 4,000, aid workers and officials in remote, shattered villages near the epicenter pleaded Monday for food, shelter and medicine.

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Help poured in after Saturday's magnitude-7.8 quake, with countries large and small sending medical and rescue teams, aircraft and basic supplies. The small airport in the capital of Kathmandu was congested and chaotic, with some flights forced to turn back early in the day.

Buildings in parts of the city were reduced to rubble, and there were shortages of food, fuel, electricity and shelter. As bodies were recovered, relatives cremated the dead along the Bagmati River, and at least a dozen pyres burned late into the night.

Conditions were far worse in the countryside, with rescue workers still struggling to reach mountain villages two days after the earthquake.

Some roads and trails to the Gorkha district, where the quake was centered, were blocked by landslides -- but also by traffic jams that regularly clog the route north of Kathmandu.

Kathmandu is the preferred spelling of Nepal's capital, formerly Katmandu, in compliance with a change made by Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition.

"There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I've had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed," said Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha region.

World Vision aid worker Matt Darvas arrived in the district in the afternoon and said almost no assistance had reached there ahead of him.

Newer concrete buildings were intact, Darvas said, but some villages were reported to be devastated. He cited a "disturbing" report from the village of Singla, where up to 75 percent of the buildings may have collapsed and there has been no contact since Saturday night.

Timalsina said his district had not received enough help from the central government, but Jagdish Pokhrel, an army spokesman, said nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army was involved in rescue operations.

"We have 90 percent of the army out there working on search and rescue," he said. "We are focusing our efforts on that -- on saving lives."

Nepal's Home Ministry said the country's death toll had risen to 4,010. Another 61 were killed in neighboring India, and China's official Xinhua News Agency reported 25 dead in Tibet. At least 18 of the dead were at Mount Everest as the quake unleashed an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing to make their summit attempts.

At least 7,180 people were injured in the quake, police said. Tens of thousands are estimated to be left homeless.

Nepal is prone to earthquakes, but Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat acknowledged that the government wasn't prepared to respond to a disaster of this scale.

"Our system wasn't prepared to fix a problem of this magnitude, but the government is doing the best it can with the resources on our disposal," Mahat told state-run Radio Nepal. "All our helicopters are occupied with the rescue, so it is difficult to fly the relief materials to remote areas."

Sanjeev Bikram Rana, executive director of the Kathmandu Water Supply Management Board, said the entire Kathmandu Valley was reeling under drinking water shortages because of power cuts and severe damage to pipes.

U.S. troops aid rescuers

Rescue workers and medical teams from at least a dozen countries were helping police and army troops in Kathmandu and surrounding areas, said Maj. Gen. Binod Basnyat, a Nepalese army spokesman. Contributions came from large countries such as India and China -- but also from Nepal's tiny Himalayan neighbor Bhutan, which dispatched a medical team.

Two teams of U.S. Army Green Beret soldiers were in Nepal when the quake struck, and the 26 Americans -- who were training with the Nepalese army -- are staying to help with search-and-relief efforts. The 11-member crew of a C-130 cargo plane that took them to Nepal also will remain to evacuate any American citizens if needed, said Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. A second U.S. cargo plane carrying members of a Los Angeles urban search-and-rescue team was due to arrive today, he said.

Priority at the damaged international airport in Kathmandu was given to aid flights carrying either doctors or search teams, said Capt. Chezki, an Israeli air force pilot who landed an early aid flight and then returned to Israel. He could only be identified by his first name according to Israeli military guidelines.

He said that not every flight that wants to land can do so because of conditions at the airfield.

United Nations spokesman Farhan Haq said the U.N. is releasing $15 million from its central emergency response fund to help victims. But he also acknowledged problems getting relief supplies into the country and the pressure on the airport.

He said food trucks are on their way to affected regions outside the Kathmandu Valley, with distribution of the food to start today.

Citing government figures, Haq said an estimated 8 million people have been affected by the quake, and more than 1.4 million need food assistance.

Medical and rescue teams from Russia, Japan, France, Switzerland and Singapore were to arrive in Kathmandu over the coming days, the Nepal army said.

"We are appealing for tents, dry goods, blankets, mattresses, and 80 different medicines that the health department is seeking that we desperately need now," said Lila Mani Poudyal, Nepal's chief secretary and rescue coordinator. "We don't have the helicopters that we need or the expertise to rescue the people trapped."

As people are pulled from the wreckage, he said, even more help is needed, including orthopedic doctors, nerve specialists, surgeons and paramedics.

The Asian Development Bank on Monday announced a $3 million grant to Nepal and said an additional $200 million will be made available for rehabilitation projects needed to help rebuild the country.

The U.S. Agency for International Development said it will make an additional $9 million available for the recovery effort.

Weather slows Everest search

At Mount Everest, rescue efforts stalled Monday because of bad weather, after 20 stranded climbers had been evacuated and 11 bodies had been retrieved, said Jhankanath Dhakal, the chief district officer of Solukhumbu district, which includes Nepal's part of Everest. That was after 60 people were evacuated from Everest on Sunday, he said.

At least 18 people died in the area of the mountain's base camp, which is 18,000 feet above sea level.

The State Department said at least four Americans died, all at the base camp. Spokesman Jeff Rathke identified two as Thomas Ely Taplin and Vinh B. Truong.

The other two haven't been named by the department yet, either because consular officials haven't confirmed their identities or next of kin haven't been notified.

Last year, an avalanche killed at least 13 Sherpa guides on Mount Everest and left three others missing, likely dead. How many Sherpas were among the fatalities at base camp this time was unclear, but Dhakal said the 11 bodies retrieved Monday included seven Nepalese.

The quake was the worst to hit the South Asian nation in more than 80 years. It was felt across parts of India, Bangladesh, China's region of Tibet, and Pakistan.

Well over 1,000 of the victims of the earthquake were in Kathmandu, where security forces and Indian rescue teams continued to recover the dead. In the course of an hour Monday morning, seven were pulled from a collapsed three-story building.

The earthquake destroyed swaths of the oldest neighborhoods in the capital, largely a collection of small, poorly constructed brick apartment buildings.

UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said three of the seven places of worship in the extensive World Heritage site in and around Kathmandu have been severely damaged.

The agency said an expert team will see whether the structures can be repaired or reconstructed.

Bokova said Nepal's other World Heritage site, a natural park around Mount Everest, is damaged, but the extent is not known.

Some pharmacies and shops opened Monday in Kathmandu, and bakeries began offering fresh bread. Huge lines of people desperate for fuel formed at gasoline pumps. Power seemed to have been largely restored Monday night.

Fearful of strong aftershocks, tens of thousands of families were spending a third night outdoors in parks, open squares and a golf course.

Outside the capital, many of the worst-hit villages in the ridges around Kathmandu are surrounded by landslides that make them inaccessible even to the country's armed forces. Nepalese authorities Monday began airdropping packages of tarpaulins, dry food and medicine into mountain villages, but an attempt to land helicopters was abandoned, said Pokhrel, the army spokesman.

It is nearly impossible to identify which villages are most in need and how many people may be dead or injured, said Jeffrey Shannon, director of programs for Mercy Corps in Nepal.

"Right now, what we're hearing from everybody, including our own staff, is that we don't know," he said.

Residents of Saurpani, an ethnic Gorkha village at the epicenter of Saturday's quake, made their way down to the banks of the Daraudi River with the bodies of their relatives Monday.

There had been 1,300 houses in Saurpani, but one resident, Shankar Thapa, said, "All the houses collapsed."

Information for this article was contributed by Katy Daigle, Binaj Gurubacharya, Todd Pitman, Muneeza Naqvi, Tim Sullivan, Ashok Sharma, Gregory Katz, Alan Clendenning, Ian Deitch, Matthew Pennington, Ken Moritsugu, Bradley Klapper and staff members of The Associated Press; by Chris Buckley, Nida Najar, Hari Kumar, Thomas Fuller, Ellen Barry and Poypiti Amatatham of The New York Times; and by Julie Makinen, Bhrikuti Rai, Michael Edison Hayden and Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 04/28/2015

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