Nepal has suspended search and rescue operations due to bad weather and said it needed foreign technical assistance to respond to the devastating floods that tore through an area bordering Tibet.
The impoverished Himalayan nation of 30 million people will also need about $4 billion to $5 billion to rebuild after the destruction caused by Wednesday’s flood.
Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle told Reuters yesterday that Kathmandu’s initial estimate was that the country would need between $4 billion and $5 billion to rebuild.
“This is just an estimate. Loss and damage is being assessed,” he said.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said the country did not need help with search and rescue operations but required assistance in rescuing people trapped in tunnels, reopening transport and communication links in areas where bridges had been destroyed, identifying dead bodies, conducting DNA tests and storing bodies for longer periods.
“We have already made requests for such specialised services and technical assistance in areas where we don’t have enough expertise and technical know-how,” he told newsmen.
Triggered by a glacier collapse, a huge torrent of rock, ice, mud and debris swept through mountain river systems on Wednesday, killing at least 626 people in Nepal and seven in China’s Tibet as it destroyed buildings, bridges and power stations.
Nearly 3,000 people are still missing, about 2,426 in Nepal and at least 554 in Tibet’s Gyirong County, including at least 540 foreigners, many of them Hindu pilgrims from India.
“Search and rescue operations have been temporarily halted because it is raining and the weather is foggy,” Narendra Pariyar, the top bureaucrat for the badly hit Rasuwa district, told newsmen.
The focus is now on arranging land transport to move rescued pilgrims to Kathmandu, he said.
With the deaths occurring three days ago, authorities said some of the bodies being recovered had decomposed beyond recognition.
They would be buried after legal formalities because of health risks and fears of epidemics.
“DNA samples will be collected, and the bodies will be buried in an open space,” the Chitwan district administration said in a notice.
In Kathmandu, families of missing people gathered outside Maharajgunj Medical Campus, where some bodies were taken. Many tried to identify their relatives through photographs of the bodies brought to the facility, with the pictures pasted or displayed on the gates and boundary walls.
Officials said only seven of the 49 bodies brought to the hospital had been identified.
Authorities also briefly suspended rescue operations on Friday after a lake formed across the Nepal-China border by the flood began overflowing into Nepal’s Lhende Khola and Trishuli rivers.
By Saturday, the risk of the lake overflowing had reduced, Chinese authorities said. Satellite images suggested that water was slowly flowing out of the lake, gradually reducing its level, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The lake is one of two upstream of the flood zone that Nepal is monitoring. Flood risks will persist until both lakes fully drain, an official warned.
Meanwhile, India has sent three flights carrying about 60 tonnes of relief materials to Nepal, including blankets, medicines, food and water purification tablets. It also plans to dispatch a tunnel rescue team and a medical team.
India has also offered its disaster response force, prefabricated bridges and technical teams to help restore connectivity, the Foreign Ministry said.
Beijing has called for emergency aid to disaster-hit areas of Nepal and international rescue cooperation, without elaborating on what China is sending to Nepal.
Authorities in China have also been racing to trace more than 500 missing people after the flood.
Rescuers on Friday reached the worst-hit Gyirong border crossing complex, traversing mountains and valleys and using ropes to navigate forests and cliffs after roads to the complex, which is surrounded by steep Himalayan slopes, were destroyed.