How do people with disabilities fare during disasters?

By Binu Shrestha,Kathmandu, July 16: Different people had different experience on April 25, 2015 when a massive earthquake hit Nepal.  But people with disabilities faced additional challenges during that time. Even years after the disaster, the government has not been able to work to address the problem these people face when disasters like earthquake strike.  

Despite it ratifying UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2009, the government has not laid out any plan or policy to safeguard such people from natural disasters. Every person with disability needs to be taught disaster preparedness techniques like finding the safe place and other mores.  

Hem Thapamagar, a fully visually-impaired person, like others sharing his conditions, had got no training on disaster preparedness – neither from the government nor other agencies. And he paid a heavy price for this.    

Sharing his painful experience of earthquake, he said that he was playing with his 29-month-old daughter on the top floor of the house when the devastating earthquake hit. Kamala Rai Thapa, his wife, had gone to attend a meeting in the village.

"I grabbed my little daughter and tried to escape even though I had no idea what was happening,” he said. 

The other people living in the house started shouting at him, frenetically calling him to come out of the house. But he could not come down because he had left the white stick on the ground floor and it was shaking a lot.

After the earthquake, his relatives took him and his daughter to a safe place. Thapamagar's wife and aunt died as their neighbour’s house collapsed over them.

He was married to Kamala Rai Thapa, who was not visually impaired, and the couple was living a happy life as parents of one child. 

In the months after the disaster snatched his wife away from him, he struggled with mental problems.

Unable to bear the crippling trauma, Thapamagar left his village in Sindhpalchowk for Kathmandu and started living in Kirtipur.  

Thapamagar, who is currently trying to make a living by selling incense sticks, has chosen a visually impaired spouse to take care of his daughter and family. He said that people with disabilities face a lot of problems in disasters such as earthquakes, fires, floods and landslides. 

Disabled persons are the most helpless during any disaster so we should learn disaster preparedness, he said.  

He expressed his opinion that while it is difficult even for able-bodied people, it is especially hard for those with disabilities. “So the state should teach such people how to effectively deal with disasters, give priority to rescue and distribution of relief. The role of local is critically important.” 

Similarly, Raj Bhai Maharjan, a resident of Khokana of Lalitpur Metropolitan City-21, lost his eyesight at the age of four due to malnutrition. When the earthquake struck, he was digging potatoes in the field with his eldest daughter and his wife. 

His elderly mother and two young daughters were in Khokana's old house. Eyewitnesses told him that old houses in the neighborhood were shaking violently, making him worried about his two daughters and his mother there. When they reached home, he found the old house collapsed and two daughters and their mother dead.

He said, "I can't forget the pain of the death of my dear heart and my life-giving mother. The pain of the loss is enduring." “The government has provided relief to build a house for the earthquake victims, but it provided me no such relief saying that I have another house. But so far I have not been able to pay the house loan."

He said that the life of the disabled is difficult even in normal times, but it becomes more difficult during calamities and most of them die because of disabilities.

The story of visually-impaired Som kumar Dulal, Ramesh Pokharel and Padam Shrestha is similar to Thapamagar’s and Maharjan’s during the earthquake time.  

Susanne Koch Andersen, the project manager of the Danish Association of the Blind in Denmark, recently visited Nepal to listen problems faced by disabled people during the disasters like earthquake. 

The Nepal Blind Association (NBA) helped her connect with them. 

Nar Bahadur Limbu, director of the NBA, said that the organisation has been cooperating with the Danish Association of the Blind for the past five years.

The state should not leave out the disabled category while making a relief and rescue programme during the calamity, he said.