Leading up to the Nepal Earthquake...
We all have places around the world we want to be a part of, even if for a short time. The places in our minds, wherever they are in the world, have a magnetic pull that is hard to explain. Know what I mean?
Nepal attracted me for all the reasons. From the the eclectic blend of travel sub-cultures meandering through bustling streets of Kathmandu, to the most iconic mountain range in the world. Nepal is heaven for any Xenophile, adventurer or photographer. I was combining all three.
Tuesday April 21, 2015...
After a long day wandering the historic streets of Kathmandu, I relaxed and watched a movie at Hotel Mum’s Home. The bed began to tremble. It was slight, but definitely coming from the earth, not the bed or my imagination. “That was a little earthquake!,” I thought. A first for me. At the time it seemed like a novel experience. After about ten seconds the tremble stopped. I went back to the movie with no idea what that may have been signaling
Thursday, April 23, 2015...
A couple of days later I reunited with my French friend, Cynthia, whom I’d met in India a month earlier. We sat at the Phat Kath Café and talked travel. Cynthia’s eyes widened. “Did you feel the earthquake the other day?”
“YES!” I said. “I forgot all about it. I’m glad you felt it too because I wasn’t sure about it.” No one mentioned it to either of us and it hadn’t been in the news. “Earthquakes must not be a big deal in Nepal,” we joked. And we brushed it off. After parting ways, Cynthia sent me a link to an earthquake data website. What we’d felt was, in fact, an earthquake – a 5.0 on the Richter Scale originating in western Nepal.
April 25th, 2015: day of Nepal Earthquake
Just before noon on a sunny Saturday, I sat on the bed checking Google Maps. I was about to go on a street photography walk to the Durbar Square world heritage sites. Suddenly the bed began to tremble. I recognized the shaky feeling only for a second.
The next second, the room bucked up, down, sideways, and back. It felt like a giant had ripped the hotel from the ground and started shaking it. A flower pot bounced on the table until it crashed to the floor. Paintings banged on the wall like a scene from The Exorcist. Feeling the power behind the deafening roar of the entire city shaking brought time to a crawl.
My heart thumped. Adrenaline pumped. Five seconds had passed since it started. I crawled off the bed to do something. I had to do something but wasn’t sure what. Struggling to balance as I walked, I crashed into the desk. I grabbed the edge of the bed to pull myself back up. Gravity didn’t feel the same. Within one second I felt like I weighed ten pounds, three hundred pounds, anything but one hundred ninety pounds. Eventually, which was probably only another second or two, I stood with my knees bent and braced myself with both hands. I finally had a moment to put it all together and realize what was happening. I scanned the twelve foot by ten foot room with wide eyes and the razor-sharp instinct of a blast of adrenaline.
“Ceiling might fall: bad. Window might break: bad. Doorframe can block my head and leads outside: Go. Now!”
I stumbled around the bed. The wooden doors of the vanity slammed open and closed, reaching out to smack me. I made it to the door, opened it, and braced myself under the moving frame. I looked down the hall at the stairwell just ten meters to my right, then at the bed to my left.
“Stairwells are strong and sometimes remain standing when buildings fall.”
“Maybe I should hide under the mattress.”
The quake continued to jack the room around like a toy for about a minute. It seemed more like an hour.
Thoughts began to flash. The prospect of a stranger pulling my mutilated body from the wreckage wasn’t part of my plan. I had to do something good for the world before I died.
“Am I about to die in an earthquake in Nepal?”
“Wait for the right moment and run like hell. It’s all you can do.”
Video footage of Nepal earthquake from Kanti Path and Durbar Square in Kathmandu (Mashable, BBC News )
When it was over, Life was was still and quiet again. I wasn’t buried under piles of concrete.
Faint screams came from somewhere distant. I was alive. I was so flustered I didn’t know what to do. The last thing my mind had on its ‘to-do’ list was to brush my teeth. So I brushed my teeth and recorded a video.
Okay, now I better run like hell.
I raced down three flights of stairs to get out and away from the building.
In the lobby, water from the fish tank covered the floor. Wide-eyed people huddled there chattering with a mix of curiosity and fear. The receptionist put her hand on my shoulder and asked, “Did you see it?”
“I didn’t see it, I felt it!” I turned to a group, “Is it safer inside or outside?” I asked anyone listening.
After a moment of puzzled looks and shoulder shrugs, a local man answered, “Inside.” I looked past him at a wall that had collapsed into the dining room. “False,” my instinct commanded.
I rushed outside and saw tumbled brick walls and dazed, milling people. It seemed safer without a roof over my head so I ran back inside for my shoes and camera and ran back down to the alley. I climbed over bricks and took the first photo.
Suddenly I felt disoriented, like being dizzy. The ground was moving again. My heart jumped and I crouched to the ground. It was an aftershock. High-pitched screams cut through the low rumble of shaking buildings.
I ran, half crouched, toward a group of people gathered in a parking lot, a safe distance from any buildings. To my amazement, a Korean couple I’d met trekking not far from Mt. Everest base camp a week earlier sat huddled with the group. I waved and smiled. “Hi. You okay?” I asked, my voice cheerful, as though we weren’t in the middle of a natural disaster.
“Oh, hi!” the wife said, with a surprised look. “We were in the street. Bricks fell down from the building. We ran here. So scared. Are you okay?”
As we chatted, a local woman with the blank stare of shock and tears in her eyes walked near us. “Are you okay?” the Korean woman asked her. The local woman pointed toward a cluster of buildings surrounding my hotel. “My house there. The wall crack. I so scared. I come here. Daughter not here.” She covered her face and wiped away tears. Fortunately, her daughter showed up.
"7.8"
Aftershocks rumbled frequently, some light, others strong enough to spike my adrenaline. Every time the ground shook, the crowd screamed and dropped to the ground. Parents held their children. Strangers held each other. The Korean couple insisted I sit on their mat with them. Ravens circled above us cawing wildly. Helicopters zoomed toward the historic district. Feeling the urge to do my duty as a photographer, I began to stand.
“Stay here. We are safe here,” a man kept saying. So I stayed—reluctantly. I checked my phone. There was no signal, but I put a couple of “I’m okay” messages in my outbox. If the signal came through they’d send automatically—I hoped soon.
About an hour had passed since the quake. A short Nepalese man in a baseball cap hurried into the lot with a sobbing Chinese woman. “Anyone speaks Chinese?” He asked, desperately. “We need someone speak Chinese and English!” Three Chinese ran to help the woman as the man guided her closer.
I couldn’t understand her words, but the bloodstains on her dress spoke clearly. Between racking sobs, she explained that a building collapsed on her brother. Her sister was missing. A Chinese woman translated.
“Durbar Square, gone. The temples fall. Our heritage… Gone.”
The man who’d brought her pulled me aside and leaned close,
“I see her brother in the bricks. His leg broken. Bruises all on his body. Blood on his clothes. I check to see if he alive.”
He frowned and shook his head.
“He gone.”
He looked me in the eye, leaned in closer, and whispered, “Durbar Square gone. The temples fall. Our heritage…” He paused. “Gone.” He looked at the ground. I didn’t know what to say.
Suddenly there was a commotion. A woman raised a smartphone in the air speaking in Chinese. When she got close enough for me to see the screen, there were only numbers, but I understood right away. Seismologists had released a measurement. The news had made its way around the world. The woman had typed ‘7.8’ on her phone and held it up so people of all languages could understand.
I had to see what happened to the city so I slipped out, ran through the maze of narrow dirt streets. When they opened to the main road I saw the scene of an exodus. Thousands of people walked along Kanti Path, the main street running through the city center. Piles of rubble and bricks, once the front walls of homes, had cascaded into the street below. The collapse left second-story rooms exposed. On the sky blue wall of one room still hung an orange picture of the Hindu god Krishna. The desk that had been against the fallen wall looked untouched.
I followed the crowd to a pedestrian bridge elevated above the street. I climbed up for a view. People flowed through the street as far as I could see. Trucks raced up the street. Ahead in a large grassy area, like a fairground, helicopters landed and took off. Hundreds of people had gathered there.
Some carried dogs, bags of food, pillows, and blankets. Others carried poles, tarps, rope, and rubble. Many seemed to know exactly what they were doing. I continued through the crowd, snapping pictures. Further up the road, a big brick building had collapsed onto a row of tiny shoe shops. Bricks buried nearly everything, even the shopkeepers. Yet the shoes remained on the shelves. Men made a human chain and passed bricks, hand-to-hand, uncovering victims. They made two piles: one of bricks, another of dead bodies. Feet and legs stuck out from carpets and blankets bystanders used to cover the bodies. I took a photo, feeling a bit uneasy about it, and continued.
Police, medical and military vehicles raced through the street, sirens blaring and horns honking. Men hung out the windows waving and shouting for people to move out of the street. The flowing mass of pedestrians moved aside in unison, like a school of fish, to let them through. A few people narrowly avoided being hit.
Further ahead, hundreds of people had gathered at an intersection. As I got closer I saw bandaged victims and an ambulance. People had cobbled together a makeshift trauma center in the street outside a hospital. White uniforms of nurses stood out from the crowd. Some victims sat in the street. Others lay on stretchers with IV drips running life support into their arms. Still, others lay on the blacktop, completely still, covered by blankets. I walked on with another horrific scene in my mind.
At the next corner, I found myself in a bottlenecked walkway near another bridge crosswalk. The crowd was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, baby-stepping forward as one unit. Around the corner a Nepalese officer swung a bamboo stick at the crowd, herding them like cattle. He hit at least one guy in the head. I pushed through the crowd to get to the nearest open space. Before I could, a small aftershock sent the packed crowd into a panicked rush. Screaming and running seemed contagious in the crowd.
People screamed and tried to get away, to where I didn’t know, but there wasn’t room to move. The crowd lifted me to my toes as everyone moved in unison. I had no control over my body, no balance. Again, adrenaline. I feared I’d fall and be trampled or suffocate under a pile of panicking survivors. Somehow, I lucked out. Suddenly I was on the ground and had space to move. I got out of the chaos, my breath rasping in my chest.
I walked up the middle of Kanti Path for twenty minutes. There were fewer people the farther I went. At a roundabout near some collapsed monuments, police directed traffic. I stopped to gather my thoughts. It seemed like a few hours had passed since the quake, but I wasn’t sure. I looked at the photos I’d taken to get a better sense of time. In my camera, I saw the story of survivors becoming rescuers, the story of instant resilience. Given the usual “destruction and sadness” news, I needed to share this facet of the story right away.
..BZZZZZZ.. ..BZZZ.. ..BZZZZ.. ..BZZ..
As I turned around to return to the hotel, my phone started vibrating like crazy. Messages from Facebook, WhatsApp, and email flooded in. And my messages that had been in the outbox finally sent. The signal was weak but working.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Exhausted, hungry, and uneasy about going back to my third-floor room, I decided to start trekking back toward the hotel. I passed the first mobile toilet truck I’d ever seen. It reeked of urine from thousands of survivors out a pipe and into the street. At this point, not much could affect my appetite.
I scanned for someplace to eat along Kanti Path. Nothing was open so I ducked into a narrow street to scope out a quieter scene. The smell of sweet, milky, Nepali tea came from somewhere nearby. My stomach growled louder after catching the signal. Not far ahead, a soft flow of steam rose from a group of locals gathered under an awning. A man and a boy sat at a card table in the street selling chai tea and loose cigarettes. I bought a tea and a loosey and walked on, sipping and puffing.
Back at Mum’s Home, the generator was running and the Internet worked. When I logged into Facebook, their new disaster check tool asked if I was okay. I clicked “yes” and broadcast my “marked as safe during the Nepal Earthquake” status.
More concerned messages from friends and family came in. Cynthia had messaged me. She was okay. She asked me to join her and a French couple to look for someplace to eat together. I quickly uploaded a few of the photos to CNN iReport, then went to meet them at their hostel.
Cynthia and her friends had their backpacks packed and ready to go but were unsure where. We needed food and safe shelter. A long crack in the wall ran across the length of the room between the top and bottom bunk beds. “Yeah, look at that,” Cynthia said as she traced the jagged crack across the room. “Yeah, so we agreed the building isn’t safe to stay.” One person’s bedding and luggage sat on a bunk untouched. “Who’s is that?” I asked.
“It’s the German girl’s. From dinner last night,” Cynthia said. The five of us had eaten together the night before the earthquake. “She said she was going to see temples and monuments a couple of hours before the earthquake. She didn’t come back.” We were silent for a moment. We looked blankly at each other and wondered.
The sky outside grew dark, the air cool and moist. I convinced Cynthia and the French couple to come to my hotel where it seemed safer. Mum’s Home kitchen was mostly down, but they had rice and warm beer.
Upstairs, we watched news coverage, enjoying our meal. It was unusual to see images of destroyed villages, avalanches, and wreckage on TV when it was just outside the door. It’s usually in a land far, far away. And I suppose it is, I’m in it, far away from the context. My friends and family were seeing the same thing, but to them, it was far, far away.
According to news, the relief wasn’t going well because of the location and lack of resources—not to mention the danger of planes taking off and landing during aftershocks. We tried to be positive about Nepal’s plight and decided to volunteer the next day.
While making this Facebook comment, an aftershock hit.
Later, I needed time to think. I went to my room to check messages and relax. I stretched out on the bed. I grew comfortable and a little calmer, but kept feeling vibrations. I couldn’t tell if they were aftershocks, my heartbeat, or my imagination. What I’d seen and heard raced through my mind like a bad movie. Survival. Death. Thousands of people in the streets. A historic city in ruins. A hotel that might collapse as I slept. I wondered if I’d be better off outside. But it was cold. Rain was forecast. The city was dark and dangerous. Would sitting in the wet cold be better than hearing the ceiling creak above my bed?
Is this the last sound I’ll hear before the ceiling collapses and a pile of hotel becomes my tomb?
The hum of the generator sputtered to a stop. Soon after, the little safety went out. It was pitch black and silent except for the periodic creaking sounds. I’m not usually afraid of the dark in typical situations. This darkness was different. I didn’t know if I would wake up as the ceiling collapsed – just long enough to be confused by noise and movement, then crushed before I could make sense of the moment.
A week prior I spent four days at a meditation center learning to meditate. So I focused on each breath as it went in my nose and back out on its own. Again, and again, and again. I fell sound asleep shortly after.
Throughout the night I woke to aftershocks echoed by a few screams and voices. By this time I must have subconsciously accepted the possibility of death or getting trapped under a collapsed building. I slept like a rock. Incidentally, as I would come to find the next morning, I slept through an aftershock stronger than most earthquakes.
7 Responses
I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad feeling to read this. I think it’s a mix of both. It feels so good to be understood and to be able to share similar thoughts and feelings since we went through this together. But, it feels bad too because it reminds me how close I was, how close WE were from death and it brings back different pleasant and unpleasant feelings like being alive when thousands of people are not anymore or keep struggling.
One year after, there is still so much to say, to share and to feel.
Thank you for sharing your story Jesse ! It couldn’t be more real and truthful !
Bravo, Jesse. You brought this reader there with you. No showing off in the writing, just clean prose. Thank you. m
Jesse, I am glad I found this on the matu fb page. Good read, insane ordeal for you.
I am on my way to Manta in Ecuador – where the quake happened two weeks ago. (I am petsitting so a family can go back home to Canada) I’m not afraid to go, but feel like I will be imposing – invading with a traveler instead of a humanitarian helping. I wish I could help in some way, but often what they need is just money, not help. — how did you handle the aftermath – to ensure you were useful, and not a nuisance?
Fantastic, Jesse. I lived in Kathmandu a year before the earthquake, and was constantly scared of this happening. People were so blase about the risk. I live here again now, and there’s still fear, but less so because of the idea that ‘the big one’ has already happened. I’m not sure that that’s accurate, but it helps not to be constantly afraid. My Nepali boyfriend’s house, in Gorkha District, fell down, and he’s spent the last year getting it rebuilt. I wasn’t here during the earthquake, but your descriptions really resonated with me, and made me feel a lot of empathy for everyone who lived through it.