Britain must see the full horror of Nepal’s catastrophe
The desperate search for missing tourists in Nepal, including 33 Brits, will rightly command attention here. Families at home will be enduring an unbearable wait for news. But this catastrophe must be seen in its full, terrible scale. At least 95 people are already known to have died after a wall of water, mud and debris tore through communities near the Tibetan border. Hundreds more are missing, among them police officers, soldiers and power workers who were serving local people. Behind every statistic is a family shattered, a home destroyed, a livelihood washed away. One survivor has told how she watched members of her family being swept away before escaping with her son to a rooftop. There are also deaths and hundreds missing across the border in Tibet. Britain will hope and pray for its citizens. We must also spare equal thought for the thousands of local people whose lives have been devastated in minutes.