By Our Reporter
The death toll from the powerful earthquake of Friday has reached 153.
When a 6.4 magnitude earthquake shook Jajarkot and Rukum West Friday midnight, 153 persons, 83 of them children, died while over 20,000 houses were damaged in the two districts.
The dead included Sarita Singh, deputy mayor of Nalgad Municipality.
According to authorities, so many people lost their lives because the earthquake struck almost at midnight when many people were fast asleep in their houses made of mud and stone.
The earthquake, which had its epicentre at Ramidanda, Barekot Rural Municipality–1, Jajarkot, struck at 11.47 pm on Friday.
According to the chief disaster focal person and Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs and also chief of the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) Mahadev Pantha, 101 were killed in Jajarkot where 102 others sustained injuries and 52 were killed in Rukum West and 78 were injured.
Similarly, three each were injured in Dailekh, Baitadi and Jumla, and one in Rolpa.
The quake that shook the two districts for around five seconds damaged almost all the houses and dozens of people caved in as most of the houses were made of mud and stones.
Several aftershocks were recorded after Friday in western Nepal, signalling the possibility of another tremor in the region which had not experienced any big quake since 1448.
Even one of the aftershocks was measured over 6.0 magnitude while the latest one struck Bajura on Tuesday.
In the quake, 20,124 houses suffered damages in the two districts. Of them, 1,170 houses were completely damaged in Jajarkot and 5, 236 in Rukum West.
Most of those who lost houses said that they were not in a position to rebuild their houses.
Meanwhile, support is being poured into the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund for the quake victims. Political parties, financial groups like IME, banks and other organisations have provided money to the fund. Likewise, India and China have provided immediate relief materials. Two consignments of relief materials arrived from India by the Indian Air Force aircraft in Nepalgunj while the relief materials sent by China were dropped at the Pokhara International Airport by special Chinese aircraft.
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