Nepal relives nightmare as new quake rips fresh wounds back open
Israeli aid workers, just beginning to help with the transition to long-term recovery, describe trauma in Kathmandu after major earthquake strikes for second time in three weeks
Melanie Lidman is an AP reporter and former Times of Israel reporter
Aftershocks have been rattling Nepal every day or so since a massive earthquake devastated the country on April 25. But the quake on Tuesday, striking just as the country was beginning to pick up the pieces, felt different from the quick jolts those in Nepal have grown accustomed to, with the shaking lasting longer, witnesses said.
While the 7.3-magnitude quake toppled homes and knocked out infrastructure, it also reopened emotional wounds just beginning to heal from the last earthquake, while catching Israeli aid groups just as they were preparing to shift their focus from rescue to rehabilitation.
“Only the ‘hard-core’ organizations are left,” said Sam Amiel, the senior program director at the Joint Distribution Committee, which has raised more than a million dollars for Nepal.
IsraAID had already sent its rescue team back to Israel, and started concentrating on bringing social workers and therapists.
JDC’s long-term plan includes an emphasis on housing, so it was bringing in architects to work with the local community to brainstorm semi-permanent solutions before the monsoon, in addition to psychosocial care. “We’re already moving into recovery phase,” Amiel said.
The importance of psychosocial care became even more apparent for people who were just starting to heal from the last earthquake and now were thrust into the same nightmare once again.
“It was really scary to see it, people were just fleeing in every direction,” said Gil Reines, the director of a seven-person team with Israeli aid organization Natan which is focusing on medical and psychosocial care.
“There is so much fear. People are in trauma and no one is going to sleep inside. Even in Kathmandu, not everyone, but I saw a lot of people putting up their tents in the street,” he said.
“But there’s fear over every small little sound, there’s a lot of work to do to rehabilitate the people and rebuild their confidence level,” Reines added.
“It was just like the first one,” Sister Taskila Nicholas, a nun working in Kathmandu, told The Times of Israel by phone. “Here no buildings fell down, but the building was swinging. I saw in the road three girls who were really crying. We couldn’t console them, we couldn’t get them to stop crying.”
In the three weeks since the earthquake, Nepalese have gingerly started to rebuild the shattered country. In mountain villages, the sound of rubble being stacked in neat rows echoes from the mountains as families dig out their ruined homes.
In Kathmandu, the earthquake damaged less than 20 percent of the buildings, so life was able to resume there even faster. Reines said that on Tuesday afternoon, mere hours after the latest quake, stores were back open and people were trying to resume their life. Phones were down immediately after the quake though service resumed within a few hours.
But Nicholas, the nun in Kathmandu, said some businesses were insisting on a return to routine even when the buildings were not sufficiently safe for inhabitants or workers.
“The buildings are cracked, but their offices want them to start working,” she said. “[After Tuesday’s quake] [workers] ran outside and they said ‘see, that building is cracked! Our boss wants us to work, but it is not possible!’”
“They started in a difficult situation, lots of poverty, isolated villages that were only accessible by 4×4,” said Reines, of Natan. “Now, they have nowhere to live, they have nothing to eat, and they’re incredibly scared. Some of them told me they’re not going to plant their crops this year. They say, ‘What’s the point? The earth wants to swallow me anyways.’”
The Chabad House in the Nepali capital reported that 133 Israeli tourists took refuge at the center in Kathmandu after the quake.
And as the Chabad workers did nearly three weeks ago, they are maintaining an updated list of the whereabouts of the Israeli tourists in the country.
“I was in a cafe with friends, across from the Chabad house, and suddenly there was a tremor,” said Shay Wagner, a 23-year-old Israeli photographer visiting Nepal after his army service. “We’re already used to aftershocks, so we figured it would pass. Slowly it dawned on us that it was still going on. We looked at the building and saw that it was moving. At that point, everyone became tense and started to run. Within minutes everyone had closed their stores and started to run out to Thamel,” he said, referring to an area of Kathmandu popular with tourists.
The quake threw communication into disarray as aid groups and the government rushed to determine the number of casualties.
Nepal Home Ministry spokesman Laxmi Dhakal said that initial reports suggested there was damage in Sindhupalchowk and Dolkha districts, both located northeast of Kathmandu.
“The situation doesn’t look so much different than how it was [before Tuesday’s quake],” Yotam Polizer, IsraAID Asia Director, told The Times of Israel via phone. “In some areas where half of the building had fallen down, now it fell down all the way… it’s also hard to get reliable information.”
The IsrAID medical team had just returned to Kathmandu via helicopter after spending four days in upper Gorkha, a remote region where they said no aid team had reached until then.
For Tuesday, the team will help in the emergency room at the main Kathmandu hospitals, and on Wednesday they may return to areas in Sindhupalchuk district where they worked last week.
The quake struck just as IDF personnel manning the field hospital in Kathmandu landed in Israel.
“A few minutes ago I told the Nepalese ambassador that we are prepared to the best of our abilities to help them even now,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told soldiers and reservists at a ceremony upon their arrival in Israel.
IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said he was not sure if the IDF would send another delegation back to Nepal in light of the recent quake.
Judah Ari Gross and AP contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.