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This warning comes from Sara Netzer, regional director of the UN field operations office UNOPSwhich provides infrastructure, procurement and project management services worldwide.
Having just arrived from Nepal, he updated journalists in Geneva on the extent of the damage, how UNOPS and its partners are supporting emergency response efforts, and the difficulties of rebuilding after devastation.
“When we think about reconstruction, usually two to three weeks after a disaster, we will start to see communities rebuilding,” he said, speaking from Bangkok. “But that is not the case in communities in Nepal.”
Community ‘completely obliterated’
Flash floods and landslides – triggered by a glacier collapse in late August – killed more than 1,200 people. Houses were moved en masse up to 150 meters from where they once stood.
Netzer described his visit to some of the worst-hit areas, including one community of 400 homes and 1,200 people, where “everything was completely destroyed” by a wall of water and mud.
“It looks like the end of the world,” he stressed, adding that the debris left behind was between five and eight meters deep.
Death, destruction and rubble
“The wreckage has everything you can imagine you could see in it,” he continued. “Glasses, school books, shoes, blankets and, sadly, most likely also the remains of our loved ones.”
Netzer said the refugees are now living in what the Nepali government calls holding centers. The UNOPS team visited several of these locations, where adequate water and sanitation is an urgent need.
Since most of the refugees are basically staying in schools that the authorities want to reopen, temporary emergency shelter is also an urgent need.
“This is especially important for children who have experienced the incredible trauma of seeing loved ones disappear before their eyes,” he said.
“Many of them now don’t have parents, and they are also in holding centers, so as soon as they can return to normal life and go back to school, it will be beneficial for them.”
Rebuilding “Jell-O”
Meanwhile, the prospects for reconstruction appear less optimistic because “the flow of the river has completely changed, so it is unclear where it is safe for communities to rebuild and return”, the UNOPS official continued.
He described the ground he stepped on as uneven and “a lot like Jell-O,” and said it was “not ready to even start thinking about rebuilding and reconstruction.”
UNOPS has mobilized funds to support urgent engineering assessments, infrastructure risk mapping and bridge safety analysis.
The issue of access to waterways is very important because only one of the 40 bridges in the area is still standing, so people cannot access water at all. This also impacts humanitarian operations, with the World Food Program (WFP) had to rely on helicopters to deliver life-saving aid.
“Overall, this is a crisis that has resulted in huge losses in human resources, and huge infrastructure costs,” he said.
In a recent interview, Ms. Netzer explained how the overall devastation was nothing like what she saw after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
Fear of repetition
Ms. Netzer recalled that several affected communities had been displaced by the earthquake disaster a decade ago. People who spoke to the UNOPS team expressed concern about the rebuilding and the psychological impact they were facing.
These people “have lost everything,” he said, including loved ones, some of whom were breadwinners in their families. Many of his relatives are also still missing.
“I think what we’re seeing in Nepal is something that could be repeated in the Himalayas as we see climate change in the future,” he said.
“This is a crisis that may currently impact Nepal, but will likely impact other communities or other countries in the future.”
