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Today was Anzac day, a day to remember but not for the usual reason. Had just moved from my tour hotel & checked into same B&B in Tamel as Dee & Ian at about 11 am. We were all on the third floor when, about noon, the whole building began to violently shake & sway. It was obviously an earthquake & we took to the outside stairs. It seemed to take forever to get down as the effect was like holding your feet in a heavy swell. It would have to be the scariest experience of my life. Not sure how long it lasted but I guess about 30 sec.
A 6 story hotel 2 doors down from our B&B had almost instantly collapsed. People were known to be inside & locals were frantically scratching away at the rubble for survivers & Ian's training in emergency services immediately kicked in & was virtually leading the rescue of two survivors & the identification of the location of one casualty before it was impossible to continue without heavy lifting equipment. We were told there was likely to be 30 casualties in the hotel. We later heard it was a 7.9 earthquake which
is very big as the strength is not a measure in strict mathematical proportion ( ie we were told that a 7.9 is about 10 times the strength of a mid 6). A 2nd large shake occurred soon after and thought to be about 7.6. The government was putting out advisories everyone around the country to stay outdoors for 72 hrs. This is very difficult in an overcrowded city & we were fortunate to be able to use a courtyard attached to a hotel next door. This site was not considered safe enough for the night so we moved to a larger vacant block of bare dust & building debris & laid out our sleeping bags to the elements. Suffice to say we did not get much sleep with minor aftershocks were occurring through the night before a big tremor at 5 am signelled the start of a new day.
All the time locals were getting radio reports of substantial damage but we had no perspective of this damage until we had a walking wander through the area next morning. Virtually the whole of the Thamel area had shutdown. 1 naan bread maker & a street vendor were virtually
the only operators selling food with wandering people anxiously looking for food. The heart & soul of Kathmandu is Durbar Square, a central area with dozens of temples, statues etc that have survived previous quakes over 100's of years but now either completely or partially destroyed along with many buildings in the older area.
A big new shock occurred about 1 pm on Sunday & was determined to be a new quake rather than an aftershock & greater realization that this was serious. All tourist embassies were advising it citizens to leave asap. We determined to visit the Aust Embassy to get some accurate advice and found a small tent city had been set up as a safe haven for any Aus passport holders. Once registered we immediately raced back to gather all our belonging & returned to the embassy. It was obvious tension was rising. Power, water & most communications had been cut or hampered for over a day with limited battery backups used up, the rush on limited food supplies was increasing. The sanitary conditions at the open spaces were quickly deteriorating & we were not looking forward to another night in the open. We had made
no progress on leaving as we wrongly thought our government may be providing some assistance to get residents out.
The minute we arrived back at the embassy compound the relief was immediate. Tents had been erected, hot food & water were on hand. Generators were on hand providing limited communications - enough to to quickly contact & draft our magnificant families back home to arrange travel bookings on our behalf. We now had 3 days wait at the compound.
Monday most stayed in camp all day. Late in the afternoon Aust commercial TV arrived looking for survival stories instead of getting out into the villages where the real story lay.
Tue we walked into Tamel again, trying to recover laundry & a camera in for repairs. Very little was open & virtually no clean up started. No heavy equipment available (China & India sending some), no power on yet as too many exposed wires likely to cause fires. Without power no water is able to be pumped to rooftop tanks or restaurants able to cook. One local told of his hometown village been wiped out with no food or shelter for 3 days. He was planning to
take up as many bulk rice bags as he could manage. This is repeated around the country. The world needs to do more to help!
Wed was a day of waiting around for our evening flight. The Embassy has been great & laid on a shuttle bus every 2 hrs to airport. We left 6 hrs before departure due to continued rumors of chaos at the airport but were processed in record quick time. We then had to camp out in a very ordinary so-called international airport. As expected departure was delayed a further 1.5 hrs but worse was to come. About an hr into flight we were advised we were being diverted to Dhaka Bangladesh, supposedly for a 50 minute fuel stop.
This was putting more pressure on chances to make our KL flight connection. Asked to unload with all our cabin possessions meant something more serious was happening. The whole crew mysteriously disappeared at Dhaka & no one seemed to know what was happening. Eventually it emerged a crew rotation was occurring & after a 5+ hr delay we continued to KL but now unable to connect to our next flight.
We were now stuck
in KL for another night without a bed to sleep, a change of clothes or local currency for food & water. We assumed Malaysian Airlines would cover our accommodation costs but they point blank refused stating they were not responsible for the events of "mother nature". This was so far from the truth as the earthquake occurred 4 days previous & the flight manifest was known before we started as we were advised by our families back home that the Dhaka stop was occurring.
We finally arrived in KL 8 hrs late & home 24 hours late, slightly out of pocket but thankful to be safe & well but fully aware our inconvenience was trivial compared to the ongoing pain & suffering added to the difficult life of so many Tibetans.
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