Issues with Coordinating Aid Effort

In the days following the earthquake, the United States, China, and India began an aid effort in Nepal by organizing and sending search-and-rescue teams, foreign aid workers, and medical supplies to the country. A week after the earthquake, 16 countries have sent materials and supplies for aid relief. Organizations such as Unicef were prepared for the earthquake prior to it occurring. Geologists and seismologists had predicted a major earthquake would occur in Nepal, and so, many of the local aid agencies took proactive measures to prepare. However, the tents, tarps, and zinc and oral hydration solutions Unicef had on hand are not going to last, and more are now needed. At this time, the Nepal government is struggling to coordinate the massive influx of aid coming into the country. This post covers the major hurdles with which the country is dealing.

Access to rural areas

Rural areas affected by the earthquake cannot be reached because of damaged road conditions. A more in-depth discussion of this can be found in our previous post about Emergency Response in Rural Areas. There are a limited number of helicopters, of which some have been provided by private donors and religious organizations. Over 70 Nepalese government and military helicopter trips have been made to distribute food. However, only about 20 helicopters are available to make these trips.

 

	Figure 1. A Nepalese man walks over fallen rocks and past a crushed car on the way to a village in Langtang National Park (Joe Sieder / Associated Press).

The UN reports that focus will be directed toward the mountainous regions of Nepal where access is restricted and they estimate 90% of homes are destroyed. The Nepal government has distributed 60,000-70,000 shelter kits, but the UN estimates that they need ten times that number.

 

	Figure 2. Nepalese villagers walk near their makeshift tents at Laprak village in Gorkha district in Nepal (Sajjad Hussain / AFP/Getty Images).

Remote villages have begun stopping trucks carrying aid to other communities so that they can receive supplies. Sangachowk village is located about three hours from Kathmandu and stopped trucks by placing tires in the road. They also stopped a number of armed vehicles demanding that aid be sent to their village.

The Chinese Security Force came to Nepal on Sunday, May 3 to repair the highway connecting Nepal and China that was badly damaged by the earthquake.

Bottleneck at airport

Nepal only has one international airport with just one runway. Both the Wall Street Journal and BBC have highlighted the difficulty for the international community to bring aid materials and supplies into the country. The United Nations is pressing the Nepal government to ease up on customs so that supplies can come into the country faster. On Sunday, the government put weight restrictions on the airplanes landing at the single-runway Kathmandu airport. Despite the complications and delays, a lot of vital aid has come into the country.

Coordination of aid

The Nepal government is receiving large amounts of aid from a lot of organizations. Coordination of this aid would be difficult for any country to manage. One local report mentions that private aid was stopped at the Indian border to be taxed before coming into Nepal. Overseas private donations are being transferred to the government aid relief pot, rather than directly to purchasing supplies. As previously mentioned, supplies coming in from the international community have been held up at the airport because of customs. The U.S. military arrived in Kathmandu on Saturday, and one of their major tasks is coordinating the aid material coming in to the country. Limited supplies do not seem to be the problem for rescue efforts; rather, it’s an issue of getting those supplies to the citizens in Nepal that are most in need.

Unclear damage assessment

Because electricity and phone lines are down in many of the rural communities, the Nepal government still does not understand the extent of the damage. The United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) reports that it typically takes a few days for supply and distribution lines to stabilize and for the local government to understand the full extent of the damage after a disaster. However, the aid operation in Nepal is still very “ad-hoc” because the government cannot reach many of the affected areas.

Fear of disease

Hospitals in Kathmandu are overflowing with injured people, with many being treated out in the open. Temporary camps do not have clean water or toilets, which has the potential to cause the spread of disease. Because of this, it is especially important to gain access to rural communities in order to deliver medical supplies and aid.

Resiliency of Nepali citizens

Aid organizations hope to start cash-for-work programs to help families who have fallen into poverty because of the destruction. Many of the communities are beginning to recover by themselves. The World Food Program has 91 markets documented, and has reported that about half have recovered or show signs of recovery. Last Thursday the town of Bunkot, about 15 miles from the epicenter, received trucks of bedding, snacks, and other essential materials from a restaurant in Chitwan National Park about 50 miles away. Because aid organizations are having difficulty getting materials and supplies to remote areas, locals have stepped up to help out their neighbors. The Guardian reported:

“Half a mile away, filthy, ragged men from Mahadipur village set about unloading a cargo of 58 sacks of rice from a bus which had travelled 50 miles to reach them. ‘My brother sent it. He is a businessman. When the telephones came back on, I told him we had no food left and were very hungry,’ Ganga Athi Kari, 50, said.”

This is not the first sign of how resilient the people of Nepal have been. The New York Times quoted Roger Hodgson, deputy director for Save the Children in Nepal, an international charity:

“People have been resilient. But it’s been difficult to get people and supplies into the country, especially to rural areas far from Katmandu.”

With Monsoon season about to begin, tents are in short supply in Nepal. In order to increase the distribution of tents and availability, Nepalese citizens have begun to engineer their own. A Monsoon is expected to make landfall in Nepal sometime in the next few days, and the D.I.Y. tent manufacturing facility that has sprung up in a Toyota dealership has a goal of making 500,000 tents by the end of the week. Take a look at part of the operation below:

 

 

	Figure 3. In the wake of Nepal’s devastating earthquake, the owner of a Toyota repair shop in Kathmandu has turned his facility into a tent-sewing factory – transforming rolls of table-cloth fabric into emergency shelter. (Credit: Roger Bilham).

A look at the numbers:

$415 million (USD) needed for humanitarian relief
3 million in need of food aid
130,000 houses destroyed
24,000 people living in makeshift camps
20 teams working to reunite children with their families

A summary of the earthquake funding presented by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Asia and the Pacific is here (as of May 5, 2015). Figure 4 shows the deaths in the worst affected areas as of May 1, 2015. More information on this map is shown here.

 

 

Figure 4. Deaths in the worst affected areas of Nepal from the Earthquake. (Source: www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32564891)

Curated topics from the April 25, 2015, Nepal Earthquake to help inform reconnaissance activities, identify impacted regions, and help document the timeline of earthquake response/recovery.