Cleaning up the debris

Just back from village visits, it is going to be along haul for Nepal to rebuild in the hills areas as nearly all houses are affected. The earthquake ( the first one, biggest one) took 56 seconds. I was in a friends house this week and he showed me on the ceiling where his pendant lamp fitting ( hanging from the ceiling) had impacted and damaged the ceiling above. Imagine the force to make it swing thorough at least 90 degrees! then count off 56 seconds , similar time to a minutes silence we often keep. The damage caused in that minute is going to take 5 maybe 10 years to repair.
In the villages I saw over the last few days some houses are completely destroyed, others look OK at a distance but when you walk past them you can see the walls are nearly always cracked from side to side or the gable ends are coming out or the roof is about to fall in. The construction of houses in the hills is a type of dry stone walling or wooden frame covered with mud and straw. Here it is called lipnu but in Devon we would say cob. Once that cracks and with the monsoon any day, there is little choice for them but to stay out in tents or makeshift shelters.
There is a particular smell as one walks through these villages, it is of dust and old fusty materials exposed to the air for the first time in years, mixed with smoke and soot ( many fallen buildings caught fire as everyone cooks on wood fires and the dry debris would have caught). Every now and again you can get the unmistakeable smell of decomposing bodies ( mainly livestock killed and not yet disposed of , but some human remains too). It is 37degrees C during the day in most areas, we now hope for the rains to wash away the debris but the next step is to ensure drinking water is kept clean.