State of emergency
On 25 April 2015, Baburam Bhandari, an undersecretary at the Home Ministry, had just sat down to read a daily newspaper at his apartment in Kathmandu when the 7.8-magnitude earthquake rippled through Nepal. He, his wife and two children left their home in the Shankhamul neighbourhood and waited on the street, joining dozens of terrified survivors. Until a month before, Bhandari had been chief district officer of Mustang, the frontier district bordering Tibet, where an avalanche on the popular Annapurna circuit in 2014 had left dozens of trekkers dead. In Kathmandu, he had been deputed to the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC), a section under the Home Ministry, tasked with communicating and coordinating rescue operations after natural disasters.
As the head of the NEOC, Bhandari is required to reach the office at the earliest in the aftermath of a natural disaster. It was Saturday, the official weekend holiday in Nepal, and his driver had gone home. As he walked past frightened people, Bhandari found a parked car bearing a white government number plate. At least one of his problems was solved, he thought. But the car's driver was both scared and reluctant.