The devastating effect of the earthquake in Nepal is so severe that years will pass before the country get healed. According to Live Science, The first good view of the aftermath of Nepal’s deadly earthquake from a satellite reveals that a broad swath of ground near Kathmandu lifted vertically, by about 3 feet (1 meter), which could explain why damage in the city was so severe. The data also indicate the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, got a wee bit shorter as a result of the quake.
While most of the city only suffered structural damages – “the majority of Kathmandu is still standing, with only the buildings that weren’t constructed properly having fallen over. UNESTCO sites and historical structures were the hardest hit.
The photographer for TIME spent time moving around the city, photographing the destruction and looking for rescue teams,” says Ferguson. By nightfall, as aftershocks continued to hit the region, he spent part of the night sleeping in an office inside a two-story building. With each aftershock, he’d rush outside in the rain. “A lot of people have been staying in parks and open spaces,” he says. And this is not expected to change any time soon: “An extraordinary number of buildings that haven’t fallen over have suffered constructional damage, so a huge amount of people won’t be able to move back in for weeks.”
The authorities in Nepal, one of the world’s least developed countries, have struggled to cope with the scale of the devastation wrought by the 7.8-magnitude quake, which severely damaged parts of the capital, flattened remote Himalayan villages and triggered avalanches.
Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, who leads a coalition government, was out of the country when the temblor struck, at a summit in Indonesia. Even after Mr. Koirala’s return, his opponents and critics say, a lack of leadership has frustrated efforts to speed rescue and relief efforts.
As the official death toll climbed above 5,000 on Wednesday, a spokesman for Nepal’s Maoists, Dinanath Sharma, castigated the prime minister for moving too slowly to help people affected by the quake and for “showing an insensitive attitude at this time of great national loss.”
Here are some of the pictures that explains the extent of damages caused by the earthquake.
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