"It has already been one week since the disaster," home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal told AFP.
"We are trying our best in rescue and relief work but now I don't think that there is any possibility of survivors under the rubble."
As well as updating the death toll, Dhakal put the number of injured at 14,023.
The 7.8-magnitude quake, which was the deadliest in Nepal for more than 80 years, devastated vast swathes of the country when it erupted around midday last Saturday and reduced much of the capital Kathmandu to ruins.
While multiple teams of rescuers from more than 20 countries have been using sniffer dogs and heat-seeking equipment to find survivors in the rubble, no one has been pulled alive since Thursday evening.
More than 100 people were also killed in neighboring India and China.
AFP
alarabiya.net
2/5/15
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Related:
Nepal quake could have been much worse: Here's why...
ReplyDeleteThe structural engineer strides through Kathmandu's old city, past buildings reduced to rubble, buildings whose facades are cracked in dozens of places, like the fractured shell of a hardboiled egg. But it's the many buildings that made it unscathed through the earthquake that amaze Kit Miyamoto.
"It could have been so much worse," said Miyamoto, head of a global earthquake and structural engineering firm, who flew to Nepal soon after he heard about last weekend's 7.8- magnitude quake. He shakes his head, topped by a white hardhat. Before landing, he'd envisioned a flattened moonscape of dust and debris. He thought as many as 40,000 people could be dead.
That the reality has turned out to be far less destructive has a lot to do with the vagaries of geology, geography and construction decisions. Not to mention sheer luck.
The danger, however, may not be over. Dozens of mostly small aftershocks have hit Nepal since the quake. A more powerful aftershock a bit closer to the capital could cause immense damage.
"If a magnitude 6 or 6.5 quake happens within 20 kilometers of Kathmandu, it's going to be a nightmare," said Sandeep Donald Shah, a structural engineer with Miyamoto International, during the walk through Kathmandu. "The probability is pretty high that this may happen because we just had a (huge) earthquake, and the fault line has been activated."
The general state of Kathmandu's buildings — with their ancient soot-and-exhaust-stained concrete, their uneven bricks, their drooping facades and crooked balconies — raises questions about how so many still stand after such a big quake.
Remaining upright depended on a combination of factors, including age, size, building material and strength, location and the underlying soil. But the simplest explanation is that Kathmandu largely sits outside the danger zone of last week's quake.....AP.....http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
2/5/15