THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In earthquake-ravaged Nepal, life and death met in a seamless manner. Rather than picking up or counting the lifeless bodies, the rescue operators gave priority to the many remaining men, women and children showing signs of life, airlifting them to the next available medical centre.
Wing Commander Sooraj Sankar, hailing from Kerala, who was part of the Indian team of rescue operators in the shaken and shattered Nepal, was explaining his experiences to the young kids of Malayalam Pallikoodam here during an interaction on Sunday.
“The tremor impact was high in Kathmandu while at Pokhara things almost remained unaffected. Even finding a landing space for our chopper was difficult. There was hardly enough area for it as most spaces were filled with rubble. So, at one place, we found a mini ground and landed there,” he said. To make things clear to the kids, he picked up a piece of chalk, roughly sketched the outline map of India, marked the place where is Nepal situated. To make Nepal more familiar to his listeners, the easiest of the clues was the highest peak Mount Everest they were familiar through textbooks.
Houses in Nepal, he said, are mostly built using wood and rocks, so the aftermath was the worst over those dwellings made of wood.
“For the first five days, not enough equipment was available to carry out necessary rescue operations other than the materials sent from India. During early May, countries like the USA began to get involved in the operations, and China too came in,” he said. While offering the life-saving essentials to the victims, the rescue operators had to be careful while find their way through the debris.
“Other than certain figures suggested regarding the death toll, the exact number is not known. No data is available on what happened on the vales of Tibet. Some villages were hit in such a way that hardly one resident remains alive,” he said.
But the next biggest challenge Nepal has to urgently sort out post tremor is the seasonal shift in the offing. “Now, people are staying in open spaces after the earthquake. But this may turn hard once the cold season begins. Before that, they have to be sheltered safely and protected. The works are slowly picking up and road restoration works are progressing,” said Sooraj.
Sooraj was felicitated by poet V Madhusoodanan Nair, who is behind the concept of Malayalam Pallikoodam.