道路受阻，震中地区救援告急

Villages Near Nepal Earthquake’s Epicenter Are Desperate as Death Toll Tops 3,800

道路受阻，震中地区救援告急

SAURPANI, Nepal — Five hours by car from Katmandu, then by foot for several miles past the spot where the road is blocked by boulders and mud, people from the villages near the epicenter of Nepal’s powerful earthquake are burying their dead, despairing of help arriving anytime soon.

尼泊尔绍尔巴尼——从加德满都驱车五小时，再步行几英里，穿过道路被巨石和淤泥阻塞的地方，才能来到尼泊尔大地震震中附近的村落。那里的人们正在埋葬逝去的亲人，对救援会很快到来已经绝望。

On Monday afternoon, Parbati Dhakal and several dozen of her neighbors walked two hours down a jungle path, carrying 11 bodies attached to bamboo poles. They stopped at a riverbank where they lowered the dead into holes.

周一下午，帕尔巴提·达卡尔(Parbati Dhakal)和几十位邻居用竹竿挑着11具尸体，沿着一条林中小路步行了两小时。他们在河边停下，把死者放进坑里。

One of the villagers pointed to the people gathered there and identified them, one by one: “Father just buried; mother just buried; sister just buried.”

其中一名村民指着集中在那里的人，一个接一个地说出他们的身份：“刚刚埋了父亲、刚刚埋了母亲、刚刚埋了姐妹。”

Back in Saurpani, an ethnic Gurkha village at the epicenter of Saturday’s quake, Ms. Dhakal said, “we have no shelter, no food and all the bodies are scattered around.”

回到绍尔巴尼(Saurpani)——周六地震震中地区的一个廓尔喀人村庄——达卡尔说，“我们没有挡风遮雨的地方，没有食物，遍地都是尸体。”

A day after Nepal’s worst earthquake in 80 years, the official death toll had risen to more than 3,800, and humanitarian aid was starting to flow to the capital. Katmandu’s airport had been so overloaded by aid and passenger planes that incoming flights sat for hours on the runway. Nepali expatriates were flying in, desperate to track down family members, and setting off down the airport access road on foot, rolling suitcases behind them.

在尼泊尔80年来最严重的地震发生一天之后，官方统计的死亡人数已超过4000人，人道主义援助也开始涌入首都加德满都。这里的机场因为过多的救援飞机和客机而超过了负荷，进港的航班不得不在跑道上停留几个小时。移居国外的尼泊尔人纷纷飞回来，迫切希望了解亲人的情况。他们开始在机场通向外部的道路上步行，身后拖着行李箱。

But outside the capital, many of the worst-hit villages in the ridges around Katmandu remain a black hole, surrounded by landslides that make them inaccessible even to the country’s armed forces. Nepali authorities on Monday began airdropping packages of tarpaulins, dry food and medicine into mountain villages, but an attempt to land helicopters was abandoned, said Brigadier General Jagadish Chandra Pokharel, an army spokesman.

但是在首都以外的地方，位于加德满都周边山区的许多受灾最严重的村庄仍然是个黑洞。由于村庄外围的山体滑坡，就连尼泊尔的武装部队都无法进入。周一，尼泊尔当局开始向山村空投防水帆布、干粮和药物，但陆军发言人贾格迪什·钱德拉·波卡雷尔准将(Jagadish Chandra Pokharel)表示，已放弃让直升机降落的打算。

The government is only gradually getting a grasp of the destruction in these isolated places. It is nearly impossible to identify which villages are most in need, and how many may be dead or injured, said Jeffrey Shannon, director of programs for Mercy Corps in Nepal.

对这些与世隔绝的地方的破坏情况，政府才刚刚有所了解。援助机构国际美慈组织(Mercy Corps)尼泊尔地区的项目负责人杰弗里·香农(Jeffrey Shannon)表示，几乎无法确定哪些村庄最需要帮助，以及具体的死伤人数。

“Right now, what we’re hearing from everybody, including our own staff, is that we don’t know,” he said. “As people start to travel these roads, to reach these communities, you run into landslides. They’re simply inaccessible, the ones that need the most help.”

“目前，我们从人们那里听到最多的，包括从我们自己的工作人员口中说出的，就是‘不知道’，”他说。“开始走上这些道路，希望去到这些社区的时候，就会碰上山体滑坡。这些地方根本无法进入，而它们最亟需帮助。”

The chief bureaucrat in Gorkha district, Uddhav Timilsina, said rescue crews were unable even to distribute relief, because they are confronting as many as eight to 10 landslides between one village and its nearest neighbor. He said 250 deaths had been reported so far, but that it would take more time to get an accurate count.

廓尔喀地区的首席长官乌德夫·提米尔西纳(Uddhav Timilsina)表示，就连分发救济品，救援人员也无法做到，因为在两座距离最近的村庄之间，他们会遇到多达八到十次的山体滑坡。他说，目前通报的死亡人数为250人，但获得精确数据还需要更多时间。

“Phone lines are down, electricity is out, roads are blocked, so what can we do?” he said.

“电话线断了，电停了，路不通，我们能干什么呢?”他反问道。

In interviews, residents of hard-hit villages said their plight had not been in the foreground during the early days of the crisis. Prakash Dhakal, a native of the village of Saurpani, was in Katmandu when the earthquake struck, and visited a government office on Sunday to plead with an official to send help.

遭受重创的村庄的居民在接受采访时表示，在此次危机爆发的最初几天，他们的困境没有成为关注的重点。地震发生时，绍尔巴尼村村民普拉卡什·达卡尔(Prakash Dhakal)正在加德满都。他周日前往了一家政府机构，恳求官员给予救助。

“I asked them to send 25 young people to help bury our dead and search for the injured,” Mr. Dhakal said. “They told me, ‘We can’t even rescue the injured in Katmandu. How do you expect us to do anything for you now?’  ”

“我请求他们派25名年轻人帮我们埋葬死者，搜寻伤员，”达卡尔说。“他们告诉我，‘就连加德满都的伤员，我们都救不过来。你怎么能指望我们现在帮你们呢?’”

Around 90 percent of Nepal’s troops, which number 90,000, have been mobilized for disaster relief since Sunday, according to Gen. Pokharel. Most of that force has been concentrated in Katmandu, though, and the army had only 12 operational helicopters available at the time of the disaster. India has since donated six more.

尼泊尔共有9万名军人。据波卡雷尔准将透露，自周日以来，已经动用了其中大约90%来参与救灾工作。不过，大部分兵力集中在加德满都，而且，灾难发生时，军队只有12架可以使用的直升机。后来，印度又捐赠了六架直升机。

The residents of Saurpani, as they made their way down to the banks of the Daraudi River with the bodies of their relatives, described a landscape of destruction. There had been 1,300 houses in Saurpani, but one resident, Shankar Thapa, said, “all the houses collapsed.”

绍尔巴尼的村民一边抬着亲属的遗体前往杜拉迪河的岸边，一边描述了惨烈的景象。这座村庄共有1300所房屋，但村民尚卡尔·塔帕(Shankar Thapa)表示，“所有房子都倒了。”

Villagers said luck seemed to determine who lived and who died. Nar Bahadur Nepali, a 37-year-old farmer, said most of the structures in his village had collapsed, including his house.

村民们表示，是生是死似乎全凭运气。37岁的纳尔·巴杜哈尔·尼帕利(Nar Bahadur Nepali)称，村里的大多数建筑都已倒塌，包括自家的房子。

“We survived because there was a wedding in the village, and we were out in an open area,” he said. At least 60 or 70 more people would have died had it not been for the wedding, he said.

他说，“当时村里正在举办婚礼，我们在露天的场地上，所以活了下来。”他表示，如果不是那场婚礼的话，可能还会有至少六七十人丧命。

The earthquake that hit on Saturday, shortly before noon, had a magnitude of 7.8, and early reports suggest that those villages that were damaged were nearly obliterated.

周六中午前不久发生的这场地震达7.8级。早期报道显示，那些受灾村庄几乎彻底被毁。

Along the hills and valleys at the epicenter on Monday, relatives were making their way back home from Katmandu, where they had been working when the earthquake struck.

周一的时候，震中地区起伏的山峦中有一些从加德满都回家的亲属。地震发生时，他们在加德满都工作。