[On the valley floor were
traced ghostly outlines of stone walls, all that remains of dozens of
guesthouses that were scraped off the ground by a thundering wall of ice and
rock and earth. That mass, which one eyewitness described as “a swath of
white,” is now black. Though 91 bodies were retrieved from Langtang early on,
according to the police, officials say that in recent days search teams have
been finding only fragments: bits of clothing and pieces of bodies.]
By Ellen Barry
KATHMANDU, Nepal — There was an unearthly
quiet on Friday in Langtang, where the remains of as many as 300 people are
believed to be buried under 20 feet of rock and ice that sheared off a mountain
during the earthquake that hit Nepal two
weeks ago.
Gone were most of the
international search teams that had been working their way through the debris —
the drones, the American Special Forces, the Israeli military. There was
early-morning silence and evidence of an immense blast of air: On the ridge
opposite the landslide, rows and rows of sturdy trees had been stripped of
their foliage and laid flat against the ground, pointing uphill.
On the valley floor were
traced ghostly outlines of stone walls, all that remains of dozens of
guesthouses that were scraped off the ground by a thundering wall of ice and
rock and earth. That mass, which one eyewitness described as “a swath of
white,” is now black. Though 91 bodies were retrieved from Langtang early on,
according to the police, officials say that in recent days search teams have
been finding only fragments: bits of clothing and pieces of bodies.
“Families think that maybe some people are
hiding somewhere in the jungle; they are telling me this type of thing, but I
don’t think there is any possibility to find any life here,” said Pravin
Pokharel, the deputy superintendent of police in the district of
Rasuwa, which includes Langtang.
“We are trying our best
to find a whole body, or parts of the body,” he said.
By Friday, the death toll
nationally from the April 25 earthquake had risen to 7,904, with 15,935
injured, according to Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs. Relief teams were still
struggling to reach people in isolated villages to provide shelter and medical
care before monsoon rains arrive, typically in late May. International news
crews have, for the most part, headed home.
Some aid workers said
they were worried that donors’ attention had already strayed from Nepal. An
initial request to donor nations by the United Nations for $423 million for the
first three months of aid has yielded only $22.4 million so far.
“We have three months
when everything can happen,” Maurizio Busatti, chief of mission for the
International Organization for Migration in Nepal, said in an interview. “That
will make the difference between the true recovery — a family that will start
planting, and find shelter better than a tarpaulin — and the risk that this
doesn’t happen, which means more people depending on handouts.”
Few villages sustained
worse damage than Langtang, whose guesthouses have long been a popular stop
with international backpackers. Jofre Juangran, a helicopter pilot who has been
ferrying aid workers to remote posts, looked down on Friday at the bare ground
of the valley.
“Only one house,” he
said. “There was a village here.”
Mr. Pokharel, the police
official, said the authorities were struggling to determine how many people
were in the village at the time of the avalanche. As many as 260 international
tourists are thought to be missing. Austin Lord, 30, who is studying in Nepal
as a Fulbright scholar, said a festive crowd had gathered in the village the
night before the earthquake for a traditional funeral ceremony, celebrating the
moment, 49 days after death, when the soul is believed to leave the body.
“They danced all night,”
he said. “It was beautiful and people were singing and it was hundreds of
people.”
Trekkers who left
Langtang that morning described being hit by such a powerful blast that they
clung to each other, or to trees, to avoid being buried. Mr. Lord said the sky
darkened and air pressure seemed to be forced downward into the valley,
creating a “super-dense torrential downpour in addition to debris and dust and
boulders coming down from both sides.” When that subsided, he joined people from
local villages who were trying to get a better view of Langtang, about three
miles away. They glimpsed the “giant white swath of the avalanche,” he said,
and people began to wail.
“Then we had confirmation
of what we already assumed,” said Mr. Lord, who is now collecting aid to bring
to residents of the district. “Everybody was just saying, ‘Langtang, sabhai
gayo,’ which means, Langtang is all gone.”
Aftershocks shook the
valley in the following days, and when the first helicopters arrived to
evacuate people, they were met by a desperate crowd. A group of unharmed
foreign tourists lept onto the first helicopter that arrived, two days after
the earthquake, only to be stopped by Nepalis who insisted the flight be used
to evacuate the wounded, including a child with two broken legs, Brigida
Martinez, who was there at the time, said in an interview from San Diego.
Kat Heldman, who was
traveling with Ms. Martinez, said she cannot shake the memory of the people she
met in Langtang, which she left about four hours before the earthquake buried
it.
“Right before we hiked
out, I saw these three little boys, and I asked, ‘Can I take your picture?’ And
the little boy said, ‘No photo, no photo,’ and I said, ‘No problem,’ ” she
said. “And then a minute later, he said, ‘Yes, photo,’ and I took some
pictures.
“Now I’m pretty sure
they’re gone,” she said. “It’s very surreal.”
Bhadra Sharma contributed
reporting.
