Survivors of Nepal earthquake tell of horror of the moment it hit
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Version 0 of 1. Survivors of the deadly Nepal earthquake have detailed the horror of the moment it struck, leaving more than 3,000 dead. Care Nepal emergency response co-ordinator Santosh Sharma described how homes in his Kathmandu neighbourhood lost walls or crumbled to the ground during Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake, making the job of emergency responders more difficult. Related: Nepal earthquake: thousands seek shelter as death toll exceeds 3,000 – rolling report “And as darkness descended on the capital on Saturday, families were gathered out in the streets, afraid to re-enter their homes for fear that aftershocks would send them tumbling to the ground as well,” he said. “I think 100% of people in Kathmandu are not inside their homes.” Camille Thomas was in Langtang village, just north of the capital Kathmandu, when the earthquake struck. “It was pretty scary, pretty horrible, nothing you can really explain,” Thomas told 3AW radio on Monday. She said she thought it was a joke when the owner of a guest house urged her and a friend to find cover. “My friend and I sort laughed about it. We thought it was something small, you know. We ran and hid under some stuff and it all started coming down. Snow and rocks and houses, everything. An avalanche.” The surrounding area was blanketed with snow after the quake, which destroyed villages around Lantang, she said. “From where we were, there was nothing you could see. All the villages were gone,” she said. Related: Nepal quake: Everest base camp 'looked like it had been flattened by bomb' Aid groups say infrastructure has been so badly hit that families could face a very long wait for news, particularly from anyone travelling in regional and remote parts of the country. The president of the Nepalese Australian Association, Umesh Panta, said his family’s home had been destroyed and communications were patchy in the south of the country. The struggle for survival had just begun, he said. “My brother is a doctor and he has had [a] one-hour break in the past 48 hours because of all the operations,” he said. “Everyone is affected.” Len Forder said his 20-year-old daughter Ballantyne, who was volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal, managed to contact her family on Sunday. Officials are scrambling to confirm reports an Australian died at Mount Everest’s base camp during the earthquake. More than 830 Australians who were in Nepal when the quake struck on Saturday were safe, foreign minister Julie Bishop said earlier. But fears remain for an Australian who was at the Mount Everest base camp where at least 19 climbers are believed to have died. “I do hold grave fears for the welfare of one Australian who was known to be at the Mount Everest base camp where a number of deaths have occurred,” Bishop told reporters in Sydney on Monday. “We are currently working to confirm this person’s identity.” Authorities were still trying to contact many more from the 1,250 families and friends who had reported missing Australians in Nepal. Some 200 Australians were still unaccounted for. The official death toll has risen to 3,218, with 6,500 injured, Nepal’s disaster management chief Rameshwor Dangal said. About 90 people are also known to have died in neighbouring countries, including India and China. Francis and Jen Comber, from Daylesford in Victoria, were trekking in an isolated region near the epicentre of the earthquake with their children, aged six and seven. Comber’s father Howard Brownscombe said his daughter had telephoned a relative to say she and her family were safe and well. “I didn’t want to take it on absolute faith from the tour operator ... but we have had two messages now and they are OK,” Brownscombe told Fairfax Media. |