[A week after the most
severe earthquake in more than 80 years, Katmandu returned to a semblance of
normalcy Saturday as a growing number of its residents packed up tents, checked
out of hospitals and got ready for the workweek, which starts on Sunday. Many
shops that survived the quake were open; electricity was largely restored; and
with truck traffic moving, hotel restaurants were once again serving fresh
fruit. Lines disappeared from gas stations.]
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Villagers unloaded relief aid from an
Indian Army helicopter at Ranehak, Nepal.
Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New
York Times
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KATMANDU — After spending eight
days living in a tent in this city’s Tudikhel Park, Bikesh Karki and his family
decided, like tens of thousands of others, to pack up and go home.
“We’re going to have a
party tonight,” said Bikesh, 17, who was carrying two trash bags full of
belongings. “Nothing too big. Just a nice dinner with family.”
A week after the most
severe earthquake in more than 80 years, Katmandu returned to a semblance of
normalcy Saturday as a growing number of its residents packed up tents, checked
out of hospitals and got ready for the workweek, which starts on Sunday. Many
shops that survived the quake were open; electricity was largely restored; and
with truck traffic moving, hotel restaurants were once again serving fresh
fruit. Lines disappeared from gas stations.
The weather even got back
to normal after rains and chilly temperatures that made life especially
miserable for survivors gave way to the season’s usual warmth and brilliant
sunshine.
While Katmandu has
managed a remarkable turnaround over the past week, a full recovery in
impoverished Nepal is
expected to take billions of dollars and years of efforts, especially in the
hard-hit hinterlands. Rather than folding up their tents, Nepalis in those
remote villages are still trying to acquire them to temporarily replace tens of
thousands of destroyed homes.
“We are struggling to
provide tents as we have to purchase them from abroad,” said Laxmi Prasad
Dhakal, a Home Ministry spokesman.
The relatively quick move
toward recovery in Katmandu, the capital, was possible in part because the
city’s airport was able to mostly stay open throughout the crisis, a huge
stroke of luck. Relief supplies poured into the airport from abroad and have
been piled in huge pallets around runways and airport buildings. Supplies were
quickly ferried into the city, but stormy weather, poor infrastructure and
bureaucratic roadblocks prevented them from rapidly reaching rural areas.
Even so, the cleanup of
many dozens of toppled buildings in Katmandu and the search for new housing
will take time. But many residents seemed determined to at least begin to move
on. By Saturday, the city’s always unruly traffic seemed to take in stride the
various detours around piles of bricks and timber from shattered buildings.
A week ago, nearly
150,000 people were living cheek by jowl in hastily constructed tents in
Tudikhel Park; that number had dropped to 10,000 by Saturday, according to Dal
Bahadur Khatri, the head constable for the area. Teenagers were once again
kicking soccer balls around grassy areas now dotted with blackened circles where
thousands of families had recently been cooking meals.
Bikesh, the 17-year-old
heading home, said he was looking forward to watching a bit of TV and trying to
find his cat, which had given birth just before the earthquake.
“I just want to have my
stuff,” he said.
The fear of more
earthquakes has not left this city, with many admitting that nightly
aftershocks — always accompanied by a symphony of howls from thousands of stray
dogs — still robbed them of sleep. But Tara Magar, 19, said on Saturday that
she was moving home because she could not stand the smell of the park’s toilets
anymore.
“I’m still scared, and
our house still has cracks all over it,” she said, “but we don’t want to stay
here any longer.”
At nearby Bir Hospital, a
660-bed facility that was overrun with hundreds of trauma patients in the hours
after the earthquake, doctors said just 40 new patients sought attention
Saturday, only 20 of whom had serious medical problems.
“We’re almost back to
normal operations,” said Dr. Swoyam Pandit, the hospital director. The
hospital, a sprawling complex of new and older buildings, suffered some
structural damage to its oldest sections. But Dr. Pandit said he expected that
to be fixed soon. And the hospital’s 150 administrative staff members, many of
whom left the city for their home villages over the past week, are being asked
to return to work Sunday, he said.
“I expect nearly all of
them will be back,” Dr. Pandit said.
The nationwide death toll
on Saturday stood at more than 6,600, though many fear it will keep rising as
more villages are reached.
In Thamel, a haven in
Katmandu for backpackers, trekking and curio shops were mostly open, although
the usual bustling crowd of young and tattooed tourists was largely absent. In
their stead, crews of burly, tired-looking rescue workers wandered through
after hopes of finding anyone alive in the rubble had largely disappeared.
At Hotel Traveler’s Home,
a no-star hotel whose 17 rooms were fully occupied when the earthquake struck,
only three guests were checked in, said Damodar Dhaka, the co-owner.
“This is normally our
high season, and before the earthquake, business was fantastic,” Mr. Dhaka
said.
Eight of his 13 employees
returned to their villages shortly after the quake, but Mr. Dhaka said he hoped
they would return soon. As for more tourists, he said he expected business
would not pick up again for six months.
At a massage parlor, two
women with bright red lipstick were waiting for customers up four flights of
creaky stairs. Chandra Kala Karki, the owner, said she had been negotiating a
price with a customer when the earthquake struck, and the man pulled her under
a table during the shaking. When the quake stopped, he took her and the rest of
the staff to a park nearby for safety.
Ms. Karki said she
reopened Thursday but had received only four customers since.
“Everyone is still
scared, but we’re here because we have to be,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m
going to afford the rent this month.”
At nearby Mohan’s Tattoo
Inn, Anca Trandafir, 25, of Romania was getting an elephant tattoo on her right
forearm. Ms. Trandafir had been volunteering at an orphanage when the quake
struck. Her duties had been to take the orphanage’s 25 children to school and
help them with their homework. But the school was badly damaged and probably
not open for some time, so Ms. Trandafir left, she said. Saturday was her
birthday, so she decided to get a tattoo to memorialize an extraordinary week.
“I’m still a little
freaked out,” Ms. Trandafir said. “But I survived, so I want a tattoo.”
This is the peak of Nepal’s
wedding season, but many of the city’s most popular wedding venues remained
closed. Several owners said that with so many funerals being held in remote
villages, no one wanted to get married. But they said a few ceremonies were
expected this week and more by next weekend.
Deepti Koirala and Arpan
Pokharel had intended to marry on Monday at the Party Palace, a large wedding
venue in the city. But the ceremony was canceled after the earthquake, so they
got married on Thursday at home with just 75 guests instead of the 500 they had
originally planned. The two fell in love four months ago and did not want to
wait any longer, Ms. Koirala said.
“Obviously, we cannot
stop such natural disasters, but we have to dare to overcome them once they
happen. We have to move on,” she said. “People are trying to make life normal
again.”
Bhadra Sharma contributed
reporting from Katmandu.
