Nepal has asked India and China for bailey bridges to reopen transport and communication links in its flood-hit north, where about two dozen bridges were destroyed, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal has told Reuters.
Khanal said Kathmandu needs foreign help in specialised and technical areas where it lacks expertise — rescuing people trapped in hydropower tunnels, reopening transport where bridges have gone, identifying the dead, DNA testing and storing bodies for longer periods — but not in general search and rescue.
“We have already made requests for such specialised services and technical assistance in areas where we don’t have enough expertise and technical knowhow,” he said late on Friday, in remarks reported by Ada Derana and carried by the Daily Mirror.
Reconciling two positions
Nepal’s foreign ministry had said earlier on Friday that it could manage the rescue on its own and declined foreign involvement — a stance that appeared to be reversed hours later when four countries were cleared to send specialists.
Asked about the refusal, Khanal drew the distinction the two statements had blurred: general search and rescue is being handled by Nepali teams and does not need supplementing. “We think there is no need for repetition in this,” he said. The narrow technical admissions and the broad refusal are the same policy, not a reversal of it.
Sri Lanka among the eight who asked
The Kathmandu Post reported that India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had all asked Nepal to let their search-and-rescue teams assist. Sri Lanka pledged USD 1 million and offered rescue and clearance help on Thursday; Khanal’s remarks make clear that offer falls into the category Nepal is declining.
Bodies 100km downstream
Rescue officials said many bodies have been washed into the plains and recovered from Chitwan and Nawalparasi, about 100 kilometres from the disaster site. “More bodies are likely to be recovered from these places where hospitals have been overwhelmed with dead bodies and lack refrigerators to store them,” Khanal said.
That is a second downstream recovery zone: seven bodies have separately been pulled from rivers across the border in India’s Uttar Pradesh, which sits further south again.
Khanal said there are reports of people trapped inside hydropower tunnels, and that Nepal is new to tunnels and needs both equipment and technical knowledge for that kind of rescue. Officials said the flood damaged schools, hospitals, hydroelectric plants, roads and bridges, and that Nepal will need foreign support for reconstruction — work the finance ministry has since costed at USD 4-5 billion.
