In Sindhupalchok, It’s Like The Earthquake Struck Yesterday

In Sindhupalchok, It’s Like The Earthquake Struck Yesterday

THE ROAD THROUGH Sindhupalchok is now clear of rubble, but only just. It takes careful navigation to get past the sections ravaged by recent landslides, where, weakened by the earthquake and exposed to the near-daily onslaught of the ongoing monsoon, the mountain face along the 144-km Araniko highway from Kathmandu to the border town of Kodari continues to pose a constant danger.

Yet one cannot but admire the beauty of the Panchkal valley as it unfolds. The highway, weary with traffic when we left Kathmandu, had melted into stunning scenery—rolling hills and red-rocked mountains decorated with lush greenery spread out before me in waves, alongside tributaries of the river Indrawati. It was like something out of a picture book, an everyday natural beauty, raw and rugged, that you don’t get to see often.

Much of the international media’s post-earthquake reporting was focused on the capital and on Everest, places best known and most regularly frequented by foreign visitors. They suffered hugely, and while there was widespread devastation to both lives and property in the two places, the concentration of destruction was little compared to elsewhere in the country. Sindhupalchok is the worst-affected district. Of the estimated 8,702 earthquake deaths across Nepal, 3,440 were in Sindhupalchok, the highest number in any district. This is nearly three times more than in Kathmandu, whichwith a death toll of 1,222bore the second biggest brunt of the disaster. The number acquires more significance when you factor in that while Kathmandu has a population of around 1 million, Sindhupalchok has roughly 300,000. In other words, this rural district lost more than 1 per cent of its population in the quake. Along with this, an estimated 90 per cent of houses were damaged or destroyed.

The scale of this disaster became more visible once we travelled some 50 km from Kathmandu. Our destination was Bahrabise, one of the worst-hit places in the district, some 22 km before the Tibetan border. As our sturdy Scorpio crossed the Indrawati, I could see a spate of damaged buildings along the way. Much of the route was still stained with the orange-red dust of previously cleared landslides, with the occasional outcropping of mud and rocks jutting out ominously on to the pot-holed road.

As we approached Lamosanghu, small shops began to spring up by the roadside. All around lay huge piles of debris. Houses, some with whole sides damaged beyond repair, stood by. The road was blocked by a large digger, tipping smashed masonry into a truck and villagers worked to clear debris in the pounding midday sun. Dust from the rubble hung heavily in the air. There were people washing themselves from a hose pipe, scrubbing their clothes against rocks in the gutter. To see the storeys-high piles of bricks, cement and twisted metal, it was difficult to believe that work had gone on for a long time. It looked like the earthquake occurred yesterday, not four months ago.

Eliza Khatri, a staff nurse in Lamosanghu

Eliza Khatri, a staff nurse at the Langosanghu Health Camp, attended to many earthquake victims. Some were so traumatised that they wanted to die, rather than heal. Photo: Ashma Gautam

When we spoke to the villagers, it became clear the panic of the initial days have subsided. In its place was a stoicism borne of necessity, which had transformed into diligent hard work, to clear the rubble, to rebuild their lives. The physical and mental injuries were also beginning to heal. “It was very disheartening in the beginning,” said Eliza Khatri, the staff nurse at the Lamosanghu Health Camp, who has been here for the past two months. “People who had nobody left in their families would be the most depressed… It’s better these days. There’s been a lot of progress in most cases.”

The earthquake is only the most recent disaster for the inhabitants of this hilly area. One of my colleagues would later report that a villager she met had seen her home destroyed four times in recent years, the first three times by landslides, and now by the earthquake. Destruction and reconstruction were, for many, a painfully regular feature of life. Another woman, Sushma Shrestha, said, “I am worried about the future. I’m worried about landslides and where to go from here and how to build my house again.”

It is understood in these parts that it probably won’t be long before the next devastating act of nature occurs. And you could see the reason behind that sentiment in the landscape: as we left Lamosanghu and continued along the highway to Bahrabise, the main road suddenly became rough terrain, uneven and curving through large piles of large, white rocks. To our right ran the Sunkoski River, which flows from Tibet. In the mud banks to its left, only slightly higher than river level, stood a house. But only the top floor was visible, the lower floor—or floors—were now metres below the mud. Next to it stood a lone electricity pylon. I initially thought that this too had been a product of the earthquake, but I was wrong. It had happened last August, when the side of the mountain towering over us broke free and deposited 5.5 million cubic metres of rock and earth across the road and into the river, cutting off more than 5 km of the highway, and, for a time, the river itself. The landslide caused 156 deaths and the amassed water created a large lake, and caused floods as far away as northern India. It took more than a month for the army to clear the blocked river. Nature had not been kind to the people of Sindhupalchok, even before the earthquake.

The main road in Bahrabise, Sindhupalchowk, four months after the earthquake. Piles of rubble and building materials line the road.

There is a semblance of normalcy on the main road of Bahrabise. But look closely and you see there is barely a structure here that is undamaged. Photo: Patrick Ward

BAHRABISE was in a similar state as Lamosanghu. Shops were open. There were places you could grab a bite to eat. But this was against the backdrop of piles of rubble, which still blocked many entrances. Most buildings bore the scars of the earthquake. Several had bricks protruding from damaged fronts, while others had partially collapsed under their own weight and stayed propped up precariously by wooden supports. Villagers were clearing rubble, fitting gates to driveways, and standing on top of dangerous half-demolished buildings, knocking away brickwork into the street below by hand.

As I watched, a large bus arrived, and people disembarked carrying large bags of rice and other essentials. The vital highway—the only route through the area to Tibet, some 20 km north—was now clear, but for a long time it hadn’t been. Villagers described how, after the earthquake, the road was lost to sight entirely; how clearing it had been a priority, for the blockade had cut off the area from the rest of the country.

Many of the villagers still lived in temporary shelters. Through the gaps between the buildings and the foliage behind, I could make out a hill dotted with multicoloured tents. We walked towards it, crossing a pile of rubble, then up a steep pathway, till a field opened up. There were dozens of tents there. Dogs and goats trotted around freely by the camp. In the background stood steep, majestic green hills.

In front of the camp stood a large, white UNICEF medical tent. Next to that, a small shelter converted into a shop, selling sweets, cigarettes, and strips of paan. A few metres behind, a young woman, Rachana, used her tent as a tailoring business. “The earthquake damaged my shop, so now I run it from the shelter,” she said. “But here I don’t get as many customers as I did previously.” 

When she first moved to her tent after the quake, Rachana said she cried everyday for almost a month. “We have no proper ceiling, no proper floor, no furniture here,” she said, as she measured and chalked fabric. “It’s hard to sleep because of the cold floor and the noise of bugs.”

Among the inhabitants, there was frustration at the government for not being proactive in tackling reconstruction programmes. There was also some bitterness, particularly as some villagers felt the government had directed its attention first to saving foreigners from the disaster. Raju, a young man standing near the makeshift shop, lost his friend in the earthquake when a falling rock struck his head. “It isn’t right that foreigners were saved first,” he said. “We live here, so we deserved help.”

But there was also a sense among the inhabitants that they had to be proactive if they were to get by. Their shops and businesses had collapsed, along with their housing. The small businesses growing out of the camp were their attempt to address that.

A house still buried under rubble, four months after the Nepal earthquake in Bahrabise, Sindhupalchok. There were many similar sights en route to this village, and the task that faces these villagers is more than daunting. Photo: Unnat Sapkota

The villagers of Bahrabise need to first clear piles of rubble before they can rebuild their houses. There were similar sights along the road from Kathmandu to this village. Photo: Unnat Sapkota

Though not initially apparent, the trauma people had gone through broke out every now and again. One woman spoke of how she had been trapped in her collapsed house, with debris pinning her down by the arm. She kept holding her arm, and repeating how it hurt. Others were simply grateful that their initial fears of losing family members had proved unfounded. Rachana, the seamstress, described her feeling when she found her husband was alive, “It was like the miracle of my life.”

As the villagers worked stoically with whatever tools they had to clear rubble and rebuild, the sheer scale of the task ahead seemed more than daunting. Without houses, hospitals, schools and other vital instruments of a civil society, there was a level of despair in their bravery. And with a cold winter coming, as well as the ever-present danger of landslides, not to mention earthquakes, there is every possibility that without adequate attention, the situation in Sindhupalchok could get worse still.

The sun was still hot when we left Bahrabise. People were clearing debris, carrying away sacks filled with rubble on their backs. Our return ride to Kathmandu was long, and we sat for much of the time in silence. As the sun set against a purple sky over the green hills, I could see mounds of rubble punctuating the view around us. The mounds were once houses. Each had a story, each had inhabitants. Many of the inhabitants will now be living in shelters. Many others will never see a sunset again.

Additional reporting: Enika Rai, Unnat Sapkota, Preeti Karna, Ashma Gautam and Bidhur Dhakal.

The Truths About Kathmandu

There is a world of difference between the Kathmandu portrayed in much of the international news media and the Kathmandu I see in the few hours I venture out everyday from my earthquake-proof flat in the southern outskirts of the city. I am certainly not the first to note this; others have rapidly come to the same conclusion, holding that while the April earthquake was indeed a huge disaster, the images of widespread, uniform destruction all over were not representative of life on the ground.

In the capital there is perhaps more stark a contrast than elsewhere. Many buildings, several on each street I would guess, have been destroyed or seriously damaged. Others, the majority, appear undamaged. A friend showed me around Tudikhel, a large grassy recreation ground in the centre of the city, clambering over piles of red bricks lying on the pavement with little comment. Some of them had been placed across deep puddles for people to step across. Walking into the park through a space until recently occupied by the large metal gates that now lie as scrap at the entrance, I saw several tents of the new homeless. A few tents carried the stamp of their sponsor, China.

“We all came here after the earthquake,” my friend said. “There were thousands of people here.”

I asked him if the people were instructed to gather here. “No, not really. It was the obvious place to go,” he said. In a built-up city, that made sense. As we looked around, a policeman came over to ask us our business, then satisfied with our explanation, returned to his small group of colleagues assigned to the area.

There is a degree of normalisation following the destruction. Across the country, some remote areas still lay devastated, while much of the nation, away from the epicentres, remains largely unaffected. This isn’t to say things aren’t bad. They are awful for many thousands of people—those who have lost their husbands, their wives, their children, their homes, their workplaces, their  sustenance. Nearly 9,000 people died, some 600,000 houses were destroyed, and more than 288,000 damaged—and that’s only what has been confirmed. But it is of concern that our media—for myriad reasons—has often reduced the country to rubble, first through 10 years of conflict in the civil war and now through a natural crisis. It defines Nepal as a place of perpetual disaster, of constant peril, a nation of victims. Were it not for the piles of debris, or the concrete columns reaching into the sky with nothing to support, or the evening symphony of drilling and hammering and sawing as people make to repair, or simply strengthen, their abodes, you might not know that there had been a disaster at all. Life, as they say, goes on.

That isn’t because of some sort of noble work ethic, or an innate resilience of a proud people. There can be something quite patronising about the talk of ‘resilience’ in the face of a disaster in the developing world. That’s not to say it is not true. But it is often said by Western commentators in such a way as to suggest that there is some sort of choice about it, or that somehow the tragedies of nature and humanity are not felt as such a problem in the exotic corners of the world we only hear about following the latest war, famine or earthquake with visuals exciting enough to promote them to lead item on the evening news bulletins. There is a level of resilience in Nepal, but there has to be.

One story relayed to me was that of a woman who lost her children and husband in the earthquake. She had called for them all to leave their house, and had the grim fortune to be the first out of the door when the building collapsed, entombing her family. Several weeks after this, she was found digging through the remains, trying to gather grains of rice from the wreckage. That is not wilful resilience; that is the necessity of survival.

Poverty was the main cause of suffering after the earthquake. There is of course a general concern that permeates all sections of society. But the poor—as is so often the case—suffer the most. More than 40 per cent of the houses in Nepal are made with mud and bricks, according to the 2011 census, and easily destroyed in earthquakes. Now many thousands wait for government compensation, NPR 15,000 (around $150). Many of those my colleagues and I spoke to are still waiting for this under their zinc shelters. Some are afraid to begin rebuilding their houses until government inspectors note down the damage; others have no means of identification that is needed to claim their money; yet others simply do not know how to begin the bureaucratic process.

Some Nepalis are also said to have rejoiced at the loss of their homes. Their former dwellings were in such poor shape that the chance to rebuild with government funds essentially allows them an upgrade. One friend told me that there were celebrations in her area for just this reason.

Another big concern has been the monsoon season, which led to numerous landslides across the country, the result of earth loosened in the quake. This means that buildings are still at risk of demolition, families at risk of burial. Already, 90 people have been killed. But when it comes to reporting from these places, it also brings the issue of access. As we plot our various trips around the country to get a firsthand view of the situation, some areas are simply no-go, as buses are diverted and highways closed. A trip in a helicopter is unfortunately beyond our means, as it is for the majority of aid workers. Then there is the question of the winter. The shelters I have seen might just serve their purpose in the heat, but their occupants would surely struggle in temperatures as low as 5 degrees, the average for January in some areas.

Kathmandu2

And the aftershocks continue. Barely a day passes without a brief shake of one or two seconds, which hardly registers with many by this point. The more cautious may evacuate to the street, others may pause their business meetings, and at night most will simply sleep through them (including myself, apparently several times). I experienced my first aftershock as I was about to conduct an interview. I noticed the door of a bookshelf rattle slightly. My host quickly beckoned her colleagues and myself to evacuate the building. As we stood outside, someone hurriedly deactivated the power generator, and within moments the mild panic turned to good humour, and the working day resumed. The same could not be said for the primary school children, elsewhere in the city, who ran from their building crying, as one colleague reported to me via WhatsApp. As I write this, Kathmandu is embraced by an electrical storm, its thunder strong enough to make the glass of water on my table tremble. I wonder to myself how many infants will wake up tonight, themselves trembling, terrified that it is something worse.

There is also the fear about the future. Seismologists have predicted the spring earthquake was not ‘the big one’ that will release the full extent of the subterranean pressure that has been building up for centuries. The invisible turmoil beneath our feet, which over an age built up the Himalayan mountain range, is yet to entirely articulate its rage. But by this point the panic seems to have dissipated. What else could it do?

Aside from all this there are the everyday inconveniences. The hot water supply where I stay was damaged, meaning cold showers for a few weeks as the maintenance workers fixed their way through the city. Patches of wall are void of plaster, and people keep note of newly appeared cracks in the masonry. Is that a supporting wall? Is the house safe? Should money be spent ensuring so?

I say all this to return to my original point: we need an honest appraisal of the situation in Nepal. I do, of course, write all this from a position of privilege. I stay in a well-built apartment—on the first floor, no less, in a deliberate attempt, as per risk assessments, to mitigate the perils should another quake strike. And this is but the tip of the iceberg. Should the unpredictable result of deep tectonic movements once more rock the former kingdom of the Himalayas, the worst problem I would face would be getting to the airport with my belongings. I might miss breakfast. But for a large section of Nepal’s population, life is now more precarious than ever. That does not need any exaggeration, and it should not be forgotten.