Today was a bit more quiet. Apparently, there were still two shocks during the night, one at 3.55 of 4.2 and one at 6.22 of 4.5 but either I was too exhausted or they were felt so mildly, I slept right through them. Though everybody agrees the worst is over, it is still disturbing to know aftershocks are still happening.
We had less supplies to distribute today, so Shaun went to survey in seven villages, near his home, in the mountains surrounding Bhaktapur. The villages visited vary a lot. Some have almost all houses destroyed and have hardly any shelters, while others had some better-off families with concrete structures that are now accommodating the villagers and they have already started rebuilding the houses. A lot of it seems to depend on their capacities to organize and get access to building materials... It'll be important for them to get their houses in shape before the rainy season.
Thomas did data entry. He's still busy doing so at this hour, so it has been a very long day.
The good news is that the website our group started from the Yellow House, which tracks reports and needs, got accepted as official website to be used by the Ministry of Health and Interior, and even Google has dropped their own map and linked to ours.
I went looking to buy a motorbike, since transport remains a main issue, not for distribution but to head out to the mountains, to know where the needs are greatest. Unfortunately, all shops were closed so I went around for supplies. Tomorrow will probably be a bigger day, as quite some supplies came in, which can be dispatched tomorrow.
A lot of information is coming in, some of it disturbing. Apparently, the Nepali government wants to centralize all relief assistance (good thing), but hence be able to capture all transfers done for earthquake relief (not so good).
We've also finally heard from three of our friends which were trekking at Everest, who were at Base Camp just one day before the earthquake. Clearly we were very concerned about them, but we just heard they were hiking back...
We had less supplies to distribute today, so Shaun went to survey in seven villages, near his home, in the mountains surrounding Bhaktapur. The villages visited vary a lot. Some have almost all houses destroyed and have hardly any shelters, while others had some better-off families with concrete structures that are now accommodating the villagers and they have already started rebuilding the houses. A lot of it seems to depend on their capacities to organize and get access to building materials... It'll be important for them to get their houses in shape before the rainy season.
Thomas did data entry. He's still busy doing so at this hour, so it has been a very long day.
The good news is that the website our group started from the Yellow House, which tracks reports and needs, got accepted as official website to be used by the Ministry of Health and Interior, and even Google has dropped their own map and linked to ours.
I went looking to buy a motorbike, since transport remains a main issue, not for distribution but to head out to the mountains, to know where the needs are greatest. Unfortunately, all shops were closed so I went around for supplies. Tomorrow will probably be a bigger day, as quite some supplies came in, which can be dispatched tomorrow.
A lot of information is coming in, some of it disturbing. Apparently, the Nepali government wants to centralize all relief assistance (good thing), but hence be able to capture all transfers done for earthquake relief (not so good).
We've also finally heard from three of our friends which were trekking at Everest, who were at Base Camp just one day before the earthquake. Clearly we were very concerned about them, but we just heard they were hiking back...
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