page_title: April 2015 Nepal earthquake
section_title: Rescue and relief
hierarchical_section_title: April 2015 Nepal earthquake / Rescue and relief
caption_attribution_description: English: Nepalese Army soldiers and 36th Contingency Response Group Airmen unload relief supplies from a Pakistan Air Force C-130 Hercules May 8, 2015, at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal. The Nepalese Army and Airmen worked with military members from the Pakistan Air Force to process cargo from their aircraft arriving in Nepal to provide disaster relief following a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck the nation April 25. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Melissa White/Released)
context_page_description: The April 2015 Nepal earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and injured nearly 22,000. It occurred at 11:56 Nepal Standard Time on 25 April 2015, with a magnitude of 7.8Mw or 8.1Mₛ and a maximum Mercalli Intensity of VIII. Its epicenter was east of Gorkha District at Barpak, Gorkha, and its hypocenter was at a depth of approximately 8.2 km. It was the worst natural disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake. The ground motion recorded in the capital of Nepal was of low frequency, which, along with its occurrence at an hour where many people in rural areas were working outdoors, decreased the loss of property and human lives.
  The earthquake triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest, killing 21, making 25 April 2015 the deadliest day on the mountain in history. The earthquake triggered another huge avalanche in the Langtang valley, where 250 people were reported missing.
  Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese were made homeless with entire villages flattened, across many districts of the country.
context_section_description: About 90% of soldiers from the Nepalese Army were sent to the stricken areas in the aftermath of the earthquake under Operation Sankat Mochan, with volunteers mobilized from other parts of the country. Rainfall and aftershocks were factors complicating the rescue efforts, with potential secondary effects like additional landslides and further building collapses being concerns. Impassable roads and damaged communications infrastructure posed substantial challenges to rescue efforts. Survivors were found up to a week after the earthquake.
  As of 1 May international aid agencies like Médecins Sans Frontières and the Red Cross were able to start medically evacuating the critically wounded by helicopter from outlying areas, initially cut-off from the capital city, Kathmandu, and treating others in mobile and makeshift facilities. There was concern about epidemics due to the shortage of clean water, the makeshift nature of living conditions and the lack of toilets.
  Emergency workers were able to identify four men who had been trapped in rubble, and rescue them, using advanced heartbeat detection. The four men were trapped in up to ten feet of rubble in the village of Chautara, north of Kathmandu. An international team of rescuers from several countries using FINDER devices found two sets of men under two different collapsed buildings.
  Volunteers used crisis mapping to help plan emergency aid work. Local organization Kathmandu Living Labs helped coordinate local knowledge on the ground and collaborated with international crisis mapping and humanitarian organizations. Public volunteers from around the world participated in crowdmapping and added details into online maps. Information was mapped from data input from social media, satellite pictures and drones of passable roads, collapsed houses, stranded, shelterless and starving people, who needed help, and from messages and contact details of people willing to help. On-site volunteers verified these mapping details wherever they could to reduce errors. The technologies used by Kathmandu Living Labs were built on top of existing open source solutions which allowed them to work in a fast and cost effective manner.
  Digital mappers, through the Kathmandu Living Labs, were already charting the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, and then focused on earthquake relief. "They were doing an inventory in the poorer communities where they didn't have a very good sense of the quality of buildings," says Cowan, whose students helped add Kathmandu's buildings and roads to OpenStreetMap. First responders, from Nepalese citizens to the Red Cross, the Nepal army and the United Nations used this data. The Nepal earthquake crisis mapping utilized experience gained and lessons learned about planning emergency aid work from earthquakes in Haiti and Indonesia.
  India decided to donate $1 billion in cash and materials to Nepal. India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said "I am happy to announce Government of India's pledge for Nepal's post-earthquake reconstruction of Nepali Rupees 10,000 crores, equivalent to one billion US dollars, one fourth of it as Grant." The International Conference on Nepal's Reconstruction has been organised by the Nepalese government to raise funds for rebuilding the country.
  Reports are also coming in of sub-standard relief materials and inedible food being sent to Nepal by many of the foreign aid agencies.
  A United States Marine Corps helicopter crashed on 12 May while involved in delivering relief supplies. The Bell UH-1Y Venom crashed at Charikot, roughly 45 miles (72 kilometres) east of Kathmandu. Two Nepalese soldiers and six American Marines died in the crash.
  Need-fulfillment application, Getmii, launched a special pilot version in partnership with the Red Cross to double daily blood donors at the Kathmandu donation center using the app.
  Imaging technologies such as satellites and smartphones, were instrumental to relief efforts in Nepal. GLIMS, group of volunteer scientists from nine nations, were able to provide rapid, systematic mapping of the damaged area,
caption: Nepalese Army, Pakistan Air Force, United States Air Force work together to unload relief supplies in Nepal.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Nepalese Army soldiers and 36th Contingency Response Group Airmen unload relief supplies from a Pakistan Air Force C-130 Hercules May 8, 2015, at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal. The Nepalese Army and Airmen worked with military members from the Pakistan Air Force to process cargo from their aircraft arriving in Nepal to provide disaster relief following a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck the nation April 25. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Melissa White/Released)", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D700", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "428", "Image YResolution": "428", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Public Domain", "Image ExifOffset": "356", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1012", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "428", "Thumbnail YResolution": "428", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1126", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5000", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "13", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "995723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "7400879/1000000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "28", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2565", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1710", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "980", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "153/100", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "42", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}