THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In a way you have to admire a people who, in the face of the largest disaster in their country's recorded history, refuse to change or modify their routine one tiny little bit. Stupid, pig-headed, greedy but steadfast.

Relief supplies for earthquake victims have been piling up at the airport and in warehouses here because of bureaucratic interference by Nepali authorities who insist that standard customs inspections and other procedures be followed, even in an emergency, Western government and aid organization officials said on Sunday.

“The bottleneck was the fact that the bureaucratic procedures were just so heavy,” Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations resident coordinator, said in an interview. “So many layers of government and so many departments involved, so many different line ministries involved. We don’t need goods sitting in Kathmandu warehouses. We don’t need goods sitting at the airport. We need them up in the affected areas.”...

Officials of aid organizations and Western governments have been grumbling about the Nepali government since the earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck the country on April 25, killing more than 7,000 people. Early complaints accused the government of all but disappearing, a criticism that even top officials here acknowledged was fair.

“Everyone was panicked, everything was closed, and we all tried to save our own lives,” Purna Bahadur Khadka, joint general secretary of the governing Nepali Congress, said in an interview at the prime minister’s official residence. “And some critics can say there was no proper coordination for the first two days.”

But sometime over the past week, the government revived, Mr. Khadka said. And that is when, Western aid officials say, government officials began insisting that an entire list of rules must be followed, even for emergency relief supplies.

Mr. Bodde said it was a problem that the United States intended to help fix, as a huge C-17 transport plane unloaded a UH-17 helicopter and, separately, four Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft flew into Nepal on Sunday to help carry supplies from Kathmandu to devastated rural areas.

“That’s why we’re here today,” Mr. Bodde said as the C-17 rolled to a stop.

But even that help had been delayed, according to Marine Lt. Col Edward Powers, the helicopter pilot.

“We’ve been sitting on a ramp in Okinawa for the last 72 hours” waiting for permission to land at Kathmandu, Colonel Powers said at the airport.

Minendra Rijal, the minister for information and communication and the government’s official spokesman, denied that the government had slowed any delivery of aid...

Yet Mr. McGoldrick said that delays were occurring not only at the Kathmandu airport but at border crossings with India and even at district headquarters across the country, and Nepali journalists have quoted customs officials at the Indian border crossings as affirming that relief supplies needed to “go through strict inspections.”

In the face of disaster, people will cling to what they know best, but they should recognize their own needs.