High in the Himalayas, a Search After the Nepal Quake Yields Grim Results

A mother was consoled Tuesday at her son’s funeral in Barpak, Nepal, where assessing damage has been difficult.CreditDaniel Berehulak for The New York Times

High in the Himalayas, a Search After the Nepal Quake Yields Grim Results



BARPAK, Nepal — In this village high above a picturesque valley that lies at the epicenter of the earthquake that flattened much of the country, residents are still finding bodies.

On Tuesday they found that of a 26-year-old man who was getting his hair cut at the village barber shop on April 25 when the mountain shook uncontrollably. He was still sitting upright more than a week later when Nepali soldiers pulled his body from a pile of heavy rubble and put it in a plastic body bag while his father looked on.

The wails of his bereaved mother echoed up and down the mountain. Her neighbors tried to comfort her, knowing there would likely be more sons — and fathers, mothers and daughters — found in the coming days.

I met the soldiers when I arrived here by helicopter Tuesday, having hitched a ride from Pokhara with the Indian military on one of its aid runs. The only other way to get to Barpak, 100 miles northwest of the capital, Kathmandu, is to hike for six hours up a narrow mountain trail popular among visiting trekkers, but now rendered mostly inaccessible by fallen rocks and made more dangerous by persistent aftershocks.Photo

Because of its inaccessibility, assessing damage and the death toll in Barpak has proved difficult. The village was at the epicenter of the Nepal earthquake.CreditDaniel Berehulak for The New York Times

I quickly learned how to tell when a new tremor was coming: All of the dogs in the village started barking. Then the earth shook.

When the tremors allow for it, the few dozen soldiers here help villagers dig out bodies when they are discovered. It took them almost two hours Tuesday to free the body of Purbahadur Gurung, which was frozen upright in the barbershop. The soldiers covered his head with a white cloth while they worked.Continue reading the main story
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About two dozen neighbors who had been digging with their hands through nearby piles of bricks and stone and wood paused. Farmers who had been ferrying haystack after haystack on their backs, up and down the hills, stopped working to join a 30-minute funeral procession. They carried the man’s makeshift wooden coffin up the mountain to a small cemetery of stone tombs above the village where they burned incense, scattered flowers, said prayers and rested from the digging.

In the capital, Kathmandu, the military and international relief organizations have established aid centers and have begun the difficult task of assessing the damage. The government has tallied the dead — more than 7,000 nationwide.Photo

Soldiers unearthed the body of a man still upright in a chair at the village barbershop in Barpak. CreditDaniel Berehulak for The New York Times

But in remote villages like Barpak many are still missing, and the extent of the damage in areas difficult to reach in the best of times remains unknown.

Here in Barpak, a rich agricultural life built on a mountainside plateau has been erased. About 1,200 of the village’s 1,450 buildings are gone or so severely damaged that they might as well be.

Elizabeth Guss 26 minutes ago

The sufferings of the Nepali people and all those affected by the devastation of this temblor move me deeply. I find myself weeping along...
Stephen C. Joseph, MD 2 hours ago

When the acute phase of urgent relief and media interest passes, the world should face the challenge of how to 'save' and rebuild the...
richard 2 hours ago

The photo of the grieving mother is heartbreaking/breathtaking, like a pieta.
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The village was built on the mountain, from the mountain, with most residents building their homes from slabs of heavy stone scraped its sides. But the local stone proved far more vulnerable during the earthquake than fabricated concrete. Wood and stone buildings crumbled easily, collapsing and blanketing the village and its inhabitants in debris. Houses made of concrete largely withstood the earthquake.

The Indian military has provided support to about 60 Nepalese soldiers, coordinating aid from a temporary command post here. They have transported emergency food aid — 60-pound bags of rice, beans and dry goods — by helicopter, but it is barely enough, residents here say. And there is no way to get heavy machinery or construction materials here to provide safe temporary shelter, not to mention to begin rebuilding.

Some families have salvaged corrugated metal sheets from the rooftops to build temporary shelters. They drape the blue and orange plastic sheets dropped by the Nepalese and Indian armies to create tents. The colors of the tarpaulins signal to the air forces overhead that the village has received its allotted aid — for now.

I accompanied the villagers up the mountainside, through the late afternoon chill, as they buried the body of Mr. Gurung.

As the sun began to set behind a mountain on the western side of the valley, the villagers escorted the grieving mother down the hillside trail to the village, where we would all spend the night in tents.

Villagers are afraid to stay in the few buildings that still stand; when the dogs start barking and the earth starts shaking, they, too, can come crashing down.