Memories of an Earthquake: Rescue, Relief and Assistance

The earthquake of 25 April 2015 and events following it was an experience that changed the way I looked at life.

The day after the earthquake we continued our work of taking stock of Bangladeshis in Nepal, expatriates who lived there and tourists. One of the first priorities was to locate and confirm the safety of the Under-15 Girls’ Football Team; they were in Kathmandu and were playing in regional tournament and had qualified to play in the finals scheduled to be held on 25 April, which ofcourse had been cancelled (the stadium had also partially collapsed). Luckily, the girls were safe and Dhaka quickly confirmed that a rescue aircraft would be sent as soon as the airport opened, which miraculously reopened the next day.  We quickly located the resident Bangladesh nationals (there were only a few and all of them were in Kathmandu). It was more difficult to find the tourists – some of them reached out by themselves and came to the Embassy; for others we had to send out officers and staff search in hotels and bring to the Embassy; some people had gone to the airport, hoping to catch any flight out of Kathmandu. We kept on receiving calls from Dhaka, and we were surprised to learn about the large number of people visiting Nepal. We also kept on receiving calls from journalists desperate to get a sound byte from the people suffering from the aftermath of a disaster and worrying about their survival. 

All through this chaotic morning, the ground kept on shaking, reminding us every now and then that the power of nature had not yet settled. The Nepali authorities quickly restored air communications allowing flights to land and start evacuating traumatised survivors and emergency relief assistance to flow in. Dhaka sent the first rescue flight and a C-130 with an Armed Forces medical team who came to the Embassy to set up a temporary camp (every one staying at the Embassy had shifted to the residence earlier in the afternoon, when it seemed that an eight-strorey building next to the Embassy would collapse after the repeated aftershocks).

Day Three brought more rescued people, arrangements for food (most shops were closed and supply chains were disrupted as Kathmandu was cut off from the rest of the country because landslides had blocked roads).

We fell into a routine in the next few days – rescue, bring to the Embassy, arrange to send them back on emergency flights as soon as possible. Small stories shaped the narrative of our trauma into something more intimate and human: we slowly arranged to send family members of the officers and home-based staff to Bangladesh as we deemed it too dangerous for them to stay on in Kathmandu; unfortunately, I could not send Abba to Dhaka because there was no one there who could take over his care (I think that accelerated his Alzheimer’s related deteroriation and caused his demise). 

Through this we started receiving calls about a group of young women working in Unilever who were attending a Retreat Camp in a remote location that had become cut off from the rest of the country. Frantic calls from Dhaka seeking information about their whereabouts, and urgent requests for their immediate rescue. It seemed as if most of Bangladesh knew them and I frantically tried to find helicopters which could be sent to evacuate them, but unfortunately, all available helicopters were active with more urgent missions. I got a phone call from a very senior member of the cabinet, who demanded that I send separate rescue personnel on foot to rescue the young women. It just demonstrated how detached the people in Dhaka were from what we were experiencing. Eventually, we managed to contact them and the women were brought back to Kathmandu after several days (they had walked down from Camp part of the way, a dangerous and demanding undertaking given the circumstances). 

Sometimes small incidents added humor to the situation – a Bangladesh origin UK national came to the Embassy camp to inspect the arrangements and then informed that the arrangements in the British Embassy were better and went to stay there invoking his British citizenship; however, when a Bangladesh Biman rescue flight arrived he became a Bangladesh national and demanded the first seat!  In parallel, we searched and located a television crew who were filming in Nagorkot, further east from Kathmandu. When we brought them to the Embassy, they were all shaking with real fear as they had witnessed buildings and mountainsides collapse, hands trembling and looking traumatised. We also connected with a government delegation who were in Pokhara for a meeting. We advised them to stay in Pokhara, which was largely unaffected by the earthquake, until safe travel arrangements could be made. We also received reports of a trekker who was in Mustang in western Nepal and his family was getting desperate since he was out of contact. Fortunately, I recalled receiving an email from an amateur radio operator network who were helping to locate people stranded or missing in remote locations. I sent them the location of the missing Bangladeshi trekker, and miraculously, within half day, they had located him and I was speaking to him. He was bemused to learn that he had become a celebrity the entire country was waiting to find. He said he would return to Kathmandu as soon as he could find safe transportation. Interestingly, that is when we realized that western Nepal was largely unaffected by the earthquake that had ripped through central and eastern Nepal.

Throughout all this time, the aftershocks continued and the ground kept on shaking and we continued the rescue operations while clamping down our own fear and ignored our own difficulties. The communal kitchen at the Embassy was open for all, people were still camping outside as it felt to terrifying to stay indoors for too long. Just as we thought life might go back to normal, and we closed down the Embassy camp (which by the way, was also taking care of journalists who had come to cover the aftermath of the earthquake and relief workers from Bangladesh who had come to offer assistance), a second earthquake ripped through Nepal, with a magnitude 7.6 Richter scale, bringing all the fear and destruction back, but we were all ready for it….