Afghanistan Earthquake : "Children are Under the Rubble"

"Children are under the rubble. The elderly are under the rubble. Young people are under the rubble."

"We need help here. We need people to come here and join us. Let us pull out the people who are buried."

"There is no one who can come and remove dead bodies from under the rubble."

Nurgal district resident

 

"I was half-buried and unable to get out."

"My wife and two sons are dead, and my father is injured and in hospital with me."

"We were  trapped for three to four hours until people from other areas arrived and pulled me out."

Sadiqullah, resident of Maza Dara area, Nurgal

 

"[The death toll had risen to at least 800 with more than 3,500 injured; most casualties were in Kunar]."

"Helicopters reached some areas but road travel was difficult]."

"There are some villages where the injured and dead haven't been recovered from the rubble, so that's why the numbers may increase."

Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesman, Taliban 

Residents walk by a house destroyed by the earthquake in Maza Dara, Kunar province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Wahidullah Kakar/AP

By Tuesday, following the Sunday tremblor, the death toll from a major earthquake in eastern Afghanistan passed 1,400 on Tuesday, with over 3,000 people injured. "We cannot afford to forget the people of Afghanistan who are facing multiple crises, multiple shocks, and the resilience of the communities has been saturated," said Indrika Ratwatte, the UN's resident co-ordinator for Afghanistan, urging the international community to step forward. "These are life and death decisions while we race against time to reach people." 

 

In desperate times of natural disasters, people living remotely in areas where access is difficult and made more so by conditions wrought by an earth upheaval, people are left to their desperate attempts to give aid to those among them unfortunate enough to be caught in the destruction of a shallow earthquake. Eastern Afghanistan teetered under the shock of a 6.0 magnitude quake, late Sunday. Before outside rescue assistance could arrive, locals were frantically trying to dig victims out from the rubble, moving it by hand.

 

According to one resident in Nurgal district where the quake hit villages in Kunar province not far from the city of Jalalabad, his entire village had been destroyed. The quake, hitting before midnight, was centred 27 kilometers east-north-east of Jalalabad, at an eight-kilometre depth. More damage tends to ensue with quakes of shallow depth. Aftershocks that followed the original quake, add to the panic and fear and ongoing danger and damage. 

 

An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 shook southeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, sparking fears of further destruction almost two days after a large quake in the same region killed more than 1,400 people and injured thousands more. CBC News

 

Rescuers were seen in footage, taking injured people from collapsed buildings on stretchers, placing them into helicopters. Most casualties from the quake were located, according to the Taliban government's spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in Kunar. Pakistan felt the quake as far as its capital, Islamabad, although no reports of casualties or damage have come out of Pakistan. 

 

Eastern Afghanistan communities are located in remote areas, within the mountainous landscape. Roads have been blocked and people are unable to communicate, while aid workers are forced to walk four or five hours before reaching  survivors. Rescue flights have operated out of Nangarhar Airport to  transport the rescued injured to hospitals for emergency care.

 

Low-rise constructions, of concrete and brick are hugely susceptible to earthquake damage, as are the homes constructed with mud bricks and wood. That they are poorly built, makes them more susceptible to damage. Homes were seen to collapse by one survivors, accompanied by the sounds of people screaming for help. Sadiqullah described being wakened by a deep boom he took for the warning signals of an approaching storm.

 

Once awake, he rushed to his children's sleeping quarters and was able to bring three of them to safety. On the cusp of returning to bring the remainder of his family out of danger, the room he was in collapsed on top of him. It felt, he explained, as though the entire mountain was shaking. Medical teams from Kunar, Nangarhar and the national capital Kabul, arrived in the area finally. 

 

A health ministry spokesman, Sharafat Zaman, explained further that many areas had been unable to report casualty figures, and "the numbers were expected to change as deaths and injuries are  reported".  Sherine Ibraham, country director for the aid agency, described entire roads and communities cut off from accessing nearby towns or hospital. "Although we have been able to act fast, we are profoundly fearful for the additional strain this will have on the overall humanitarian response in Afghanistan", he stated. 

 

 

A deadly earthquake in northeastern Afghanistan has killed more than 1,400 people and injured at least 3,000, according to the Taliban. Afghan volunteers and Taliban security personnel transfer the injured to a military helicopter in the Mazar Dara village of Nurgal, a district of Kunar province on Monday. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

 

In a statement by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, immediate needs include search and rescue support, emergency health care and medical supplies, food, clean water, and restoration of road access to reach isolated communities. In October of 2023 a magnitude 6.3 earthquake had hit Afghanistan, with strong aftershocks following. An estimated 4,000 people died in that quake, according to the Taliban.

 

Now, according to the International Rescue Committee, Sunday's earthquake in Afghanistan was expected to "dwarf the scale of the humanitarian needs" that the 2023 disaster had caused. 

 

Civil defense workers, locals, and army soldiers prepare to evacuate injured victims of an earthquake that killed hundreds and destroyed numerous villages in eastern Afghanistan, in Mazar Dara, Kunar province, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Hedayat Shah)

 

An Extraordinary Four-Year Migration

This April 2015 photo shows marine sea slugs from a derelict vessel from Iwate Prefecture, Japan, that washed ashore in Oregon. (John W. Chapman/Associated Press)

"It's a bit of what we call ecological roulette."
"We think that earlier tsunamis were contributing mostly, to the ocean, essentially biodegradable material: wood and trees which don't last nearly as long, of course, as does the plastic material."
"The diversity was somewhat jaw-dropping. Mollusks, sea anemones, corals, crabs, just a wide variety of species, really a cross-sectiion of Japanese fauna."
"Most of the species were, in fact, novel and not found in North America or the Hawaiian islands."
"When that first dock arrived, [floating in from Japan post-2011Tsunami] it was just 100 per cent covered with tens of thousands of mussels from Japan, and just draped with kelp."
"How many species started the trip we don't know and how many were lost in the tsunami is hard to know."
James Carlton, marine sciences professor, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts

A Japanese dock covered with marine life from Japan washed up on the Oregon coast. (James Carlton)

"OK, we found something here [she recalls in first encountering the unexpected visitors]. And this isn't from around here, and ... there's some marine life on it."
"It is an international issue," she said. "The ocean definitely showcases that we're all interconnected. There's no boundaries out there with the ocean. We're all in this together."
Karla Robison, environmental and emergency service manager, Ucluelet, British Columbia

 So far there have been no  ewer than a whopping 300 species of fish, mussels and other aqua- creatures discovered to have made their way across the Pacific Ocean taking a trip aboard debris from Japan that washed off the mainland or was whooshed off docking areas as a result of the monumental Japanese tsunami resulting from the powerful 9.1 Richter-scale earthquake that hit the islands in 2011. The flotsam and jetsam may have taken their time, relatively speaking, but for years they've been washing ashore far from their origins.

Researchers have now revealed through a study published in the journal Science, that this mass migration of sea creatures hiking their way along the vast ocean on all manner of vessels and even ocean-bobbing domestic items, represent the longest and largest marine migration ever documented. Scientists have for years collected items washing ashore carrying a wide range of creatures, from beaches in Washington, Oregon, California, British Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii, tracking the sea animals native to Japan.

Now that it has been confirmed that the creatures are far from their natural habitat, concerns have arisen that they will establish themselves as foreign invading species, and possibly eventually succeed in displacing native species. Whether all of the 289 species that have been identified will manage to adjust to their new surroundings and thrive there, eventually making room for themselves at the expense of native creatures, is as yet speculation.

This June 2012 photo shows Japanese sea stars (Asterias amurensis) on a dock from Misawa, Japan that washed ashore near Newport, Ore. (John W. Chapman/Associated Press)

The very fact that they managed to undertake such a tremendously long voyage over a lengthy period of time is in and of itself fairly astonishing given that researchers estimate that a million creatures made a journey of 7,725 kilometres to cross the Pacific Ocean eventually reaching the West Coast of North America, hundreds of thousands of mussels among them. The previous experience with the invasion of zebra mussels is not one that endears its memory in the opinion of biologists. A repeat would not be a cause for celebration.

Past incidents of marine invasion that been harmful to indigenous farmed shellfish, have caused great disruption and economic losses while eroding the local ecosystem and have caused the spread of disease-carrying species, according to Bella Galil, marine biologist with the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv, Israel.

No one could have foreseen that boats, docks, buoys and other such constructed objects would be swept out into the Pacific by an immense tsunami. And even if such an untoward event might have been visualized, nothing could have been done to prevent it. Mother nature disposes. But as the mountain of debris drifted its inexorable way toward North America carrying an army of live creatures, some of which multiplied with new generations while in transit, the deed was done.

And aside from the invasion of foreign species along with the anticipation that complications from their presence will most certainly arise as time wears on, there is the additional disturbing fact that most of the debris that carried those same creatures to Western shores are pallets, crates, buoys and boats constructed of plastic.

Just as the live hitchhikers survived their long journey, the plastics that carried them will survive long afterward to clutter up the world's landscape and add to the pervasive and growing heaps of plastic garbage with all the threats to the environment that they entail.

This undated photo shows researcher John Chapman inspecting a Japanese vessel that washed ashore on Long Beach, Wash. (Russ Lewis/Associated Press)

Child Trafficking in Nepal

"This is a bad time during the emergency; trafficking is a problem. Watch out for unaccompanied kids."
"If you're suspicious call this number."
Child trafficking alert, Siundhupalchok, Nepal

"Watch out for people who give you false dreams of education, food, jobs. Don't believe it. They're taking advantage of our honesty."
"Are you alone? Who is with you?"
Sangeet Girio, handling out pamphlets, Shakti Samua group

"These kids were told they were going to school in India. They were genuinely excited about leaving home and getting an education and a chance for a better life."
"But when asked where they wrote the entrance exam, they didn't know anything about it."
"We have 600 registered care homes (orphanages) in Nepal. The requests to open more after the earthquake have tripled. Some of them are in fact scams for religions that are using the kids to raise money."
"In the name of children, these people are stealing money."
Tarak Dhital, executive director, Central Child Welfare Board, Kathmandu

A child lines up with her mother in a temporary shelter during food distribution at Tundikhel in Kathmandu, Nepal. After the earthquake campaigners warned that girls and young women were vulnerable to human traffickers. Photograph: Hemanta Shrestha/EPA

Nepalese find themselves in a parlous state of governmental inability to cope with the after-effects of the seismic shocks that killed thousands and left a million people without shelter. Schools were destroyed and children were shut out of classrooms until such time as new, temporary replacements could be opened. A country always on the brink of economic failure and governmental dysfunction finds itself in a desperate situation, despite the response of international aid organizations.

Where some NGOs rush in to aid at times of national catastrophes to help bring a country back to a state of normalcy, other groups also rush in, to take advantage of the havoc and the desperate plight of people in shock. In Nepal, destroyed homes, collapsed schools and dead parents leaving behind orphans create the perfect junction for human traffickers to move in and ply their odious trade; this time in corralling for their nefarious purposes children left in desperate straits.

The United Nations has estimated that twelve to fifteen thousand girls are victimized by human traffickers in Nepal every year. The pace has accelerated with the advent of this new tragedy in an already beleaguered country and society. The trafficked girls end up in India, in South Korea and South Africa. Humanitarian agencies, recognizing the plight of these children, joined forces in a scheme meant to rescue children before they are taken out of the country.

A local child rescue group, Shakti Samua, has volunteers waiting at bus stops in Sindhupalchok, the district known for representing the highest rate of trafficking of children. An intersection of switchback roads in Bandeu is the venue where buses and trucks drive out of the mountains on their way to Kathmandu. The bus stop is monitored by local police. The volunteers with the charity await their opportunity to board the buses as they stop to let off passengers or take them on, pamphlets at the ready for hand-outs.

Travellers sit three to a seat on the buses, the aisles are packed. The volunteer boarding swiftly with the handout pamphlets explaining the crisis in human trafficking of vulnerable Nepalese children knows there is a mere pause available before the bus resumes its journey; they must speak quickly, delivering the essence of the message, and scattering the pamphlets among the passengers to alert them to the situation, then disembark and wait for the next buses to arrive.

At one stop in the Kathmandu Valley, 19 children; eleven boys and eight girls between the ages of ten and thirteen from Dolakha, were rescued from three men from India. The parents of the children were called and informed that their children were meant to be sold by the traffickers, and not, as the parents and the children believed, taken to safe houses where access to good schools would be made available to them. They are sometimes sold as slave labourers. The children were returned to their parents.

Another 45 children placed in a similar plight were rescued as well. The Nepalese government on May 26 brought forward a new law, that children under 16 are not permitted to travel without a parent or another adult approved by the district's child welfare board, outside their home district. International adoptions have been halted until September. Radio advertisements warn the public: "Trafficking is a problem. Keep your kids close."

Poor families in the mountains had been convinced by unscrupulously smooth talkers that their children would be exposed to a good education and better food than they could give them if they were placed in a care home in Kathmandu. The children ended up stuffed ten to a room, fed paltry quantities that led them to scavenge for food on the streets. But they were used in a campaign asking for charity to give them a better life.

"We have rescued 26 children from the clutches of human traffickers in the past 20 days and sent them to rehabilitation centres."
"Following the Nepal disaster, the fear of children and women falling prey to the human trafficker gangs has increased manifold and so we are keeping a strict vigil along the Indo-Nepal border to prevent such happenings."
Sanjeev Kumar,  senior labour official, Bihar’s East Champaran district, India.

Nepalese Aiding Nepalese

"I didn't know what I was doing. I've never saved a cat, much less a human being. I'm not a relief worker. I'm just a mom from Arlington."
"He was willing to go where others would not. He was willing to land at altitudes -- 13,000, 14,000, 20,000 feet - that others would not. He said, 'If we don't get to them, who will?'"
"I was there, in Nepal, when a second earthquake hit after the first one, and the morale just sank. There was this sense of hopelessness. Subek's death was similar. I paced around the house for two days. I didn't want to do anything."
"I have a master's degree, but I'll wait tables. I need a morning shift. I'm going to do it in memory of Subek. My little brother."
Samisha LaMeyer, Arlington, Massachusetts

Samisha LaMeyer

Samisha LaMeyer (center), with Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita (left) and helicopter pilot Subek Shrestha.

Twenty years ago, Samisha LaMeyer left her home in Kathmandu to become an American citizen. In May she returned to Kathmandu, a loyal Nepalese, and loving daughter to aid her mother who had established a school in the capital of Nepal and who her daughter wanted to see with her own eyes that she was alive and well. Leaving her husband and two daughters behind she left for Kathmandu with 300 pounds of protein bars and other items packed into bags, to take along with her.

She found her mother well. Her mother, Gauri Rana, was sheltering with thousands of others in fields around the school her mother operates for poor students. Knowing her mother would be occupied with looking after things as best she could under the circumstances, Samisha thought of the thousands of Nepalese trapped in out-of-the-way mountain villages, many of which had been destroyed, residents killed and others desperately waiting for subsistence supplies to arrive.

She decided while in Nepal to begin raising funds through her Facebook friends to initiate a method on her own of giving aid where it was most needed. She went to a number of sources looking for helicopters for hire, but found most private helicopter companies charging outrageous sums to make the kind of humanitarian drops she was thinking of. One pilot, Subek Shrestha, was different. He was 28, and a crack pilot, infused with the same sense of needing to respond to the tragedy to aid people.

He had been busy retrieving bodies of the mountains. When he understood what Samisha LaMeyer was intent on doing, he volunteered his services, to return to the mountain villages with rice and supplies. There was an instant rapport between them, and he spoke of the Nepalese woman from the United States as his 'big sister'. She, in return addressed him as little brother: Bhai, to his Didi. And they occupied themselves flying food and supplies to the isolated villages in the mountains.

They formed a triangular team with an experienced climber from Colorado, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa Akita, and with a veteran aid worker, Max Khatri. Subek Shrestha knew from his experiences where the need was great and for three weeks the team worked together to deliver aid to desperate survivors. When Samisha LaMeyer returned to the U.S. and her family after that period of time, she and Subek Shrestha kept in touch by email.

He was making profit from chartered flights, and using that profit to plow back into relief efforts. It cost $2,500 as an hourly rate to hire helicopters. "I would love to fly your helicopter, Didi", responded the  young man, when his friend in Arlington informed him she intended to buy a helicopter of her own. And this was the last message that passed between them. Flying a mission with three doctors from Doctors Without Borders, the helicopter Shrestha was piloting crashed.

All aboard were killed. As a tribute to the young man LaMeyer contacted his family for permission to go immediately back to the work of helping people in Nepal, rather than wait the customary 13 days as a memorial to the dead. Now, she and a network of volunteers have dedicated themselves to evacuating 200 students from a monastery 18,000 feet high up in the mountains where Shrestha had dropped rice.

The monsoons are expected to arrive in the near future, and the removal of the students from the monastery has become an emergency project they have committed themselves to. To raise the kind of money she needs to continue working on aid for the earthquake victims of Nepal, Samisha LaMeyer is determined to work any kind of job that will bring her closer to fulfilling her goal. In memory of her 'little brother'.

Arlington resident and Nepali native Samisha Joshi LaMeyer, at left, delivers supplies to the Gorkha district of Nepal. Courtesy Photo

Striving for Normal

"The children are having nightmares; they're irritable, they cry a lot and want to stay near to their mothers."
"We're also working with the teachers who survived the quake. They're anxious, they need support and they also need to know what to say to the kids."
Anita Querirazza, Italian child psychologist, Nepal

Tents dot the landscape in Kathmandu following an April 25 earthquake. (Peter Bregg for National Post) - See more at: http://news.nationalpost.com/features/aftershock-heres-how-nepal-is-coping-after-two-earthquakes-left-nearly-9000-dead-16800-injured#sthash.cQBue50T.dpuf

Photo: Peter Bregg -- Tents dot the landscape in Kathmandu after the April 24 earthquake

Nepal suffered two devastating earthquakes between April 25 and May 12, with numerous aftershocks in between. Terrified Nepalese were unable to find peace of mind, fearful of yet other tremors that would wreak further havoc in what has already made their lives a misery of panic and fear. And these are the survivors. A death toll of 9,000 is still being assessed. Hospitals and aid workers from the international community are still coping with the 6,800 injured.

A half-million homes were destroyed and an additional 270,000 homes were damaged. The convulsed earth continues to produce massive landslides that destroy entire villages, make roads impassable and ruin crops. The affected zones continue to experience massive tremors up to 6.8 magnitude on the Richter scale, on a daily basis. Little wonder the population is traumatized, the children in a state of perpetual confusion and fear creeps into their sleep patterns turning them to little-understood nightmares.

The state of emergency that prevails is estimated to extend into two months at the very least, as authorities and their foreign partners attempt to cope with the destruction of the massive earthquakes. Some of the villages in the steep mountain regions have not yet been reached by emergency workers. Landslides have cut off access through roads. Helicopters make their daily flights dropping basic emergency rations of food, water and tarpaulins.

People collect rice and tarpaulins from Plan International at a distribution centre in Shikharpur -- Photo Peter Bregg

Of the 75 districts in Nepal, thirty are damaged, and of those fourteen have sustained utterly critical disarray. Two districts, Dolakha and Sindhupalchok, have been the worst affected. The capital has seen dreadful damage but the city remains open to business routine even while it desperately attempts to recover its equilibrium. Parks in Kathmandu are crowded with tarpaulins sheltering people too intimidated by fear to return to their fragile homes; that is, those who still have homes.

New buildings built to modern standards were able to withstand the quake's effects for the most part, while the old structures built of sand and river stones quickly collapsed. There is a need to move ahead to replace them as swiftly as possible so people can move into them with the confidence that they will shelter them safely in the event of further tremors, for when the monsoon season arrives on the near horizon, the tarpaulins will be ineffective at sheltering people.

Already severely damaged mountain roads will become vulnerable to complete washout when the monsoon rains arrive. With that rain will come mosquitoes and then malaria will loom as a threat. If flooding ensues with the rain, given the compromised water system, the threat of cholera will present itself. Nepalese farmers in vulnerable areas must spur on their activities to get their crops in, to rebuild their homes in case roads leading to them become impassable.

The government had assured that schools would reopen toward the end of May. Local authorities are still struggling to be able to open schools that were destroyed, collapsing in the earthquakes, and requiring to be replaced. Their replacements for the immediate future will be temporary until such time as more permanent structures can be built, enabling children to return to school and a scheduled routine in their disrupted lives.

Anything You Can Do . . .

Nuns practising kung fu at the Druk Gawa Khilwa Buddhist nunnery in Ramkot, Nepal. Photograph: Simon De Trey-White/Eyevine

"None of us shrieked in fear or crouched on the floor crying. We moved quickly, dodged falling pieces of the wall and escaped."
"Community duty is also a form of spiritual exercise, and our strong limbs are now trained to work hard and for long hours."
"Kung fu is not meant to attack people or fight with them. It prepares you for enduring difficult situations, like this earthquake. It is also a form of meditation because it helps us concentrate, keep our minds still and body nimble and light."
Jigme Konchok, 21, Buddhist 'kung fu' nun, Kathmandu

Buddhist nuns practise kung fu at Druk Amitabha nunnery in Kathmandu.  File Photo: AFP

But the women at this 26-year-old nunnery excel at other occupations viewed as the gender-specific monopoly of masculine skills, particularly in the monastic order. They have learned to do plumbing, electrical fitting, computers, bicycle riding, speak English, and pray just as well as any monk who prides himself on practical and spiritual skills such as these. And with those skills they exit their Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery to offer their services to the villagers living below.

All the more so since the devastating earthquake that shook the western valley of Kathmandu, inflicting violence on the nunnery just as it did other buildings throughout the area in the Earth's cataclysmic upheaval in Nepal. None of the nuns was crushed, became injured, died as a result of the building's response to the tremblor. Though the windows shattered, staircases collapsed, and doors rattled as walls buckled, the nuns leaped to their own salvation.

And they were inspired by their order and their considerable acquired skills to help in providing aid to victims of the deadly earthquake. Structural damage to their sanctuary was assessed and the nuns determined that their duty lay in looking beyond the nunnery for the moment, to offer assistance to those whom they felt required it far more than they did. And so, every day, wearing their distinctive maroon robes nuns travel to nearby villages to give aid.

They help to remove the rubble from people's shattered homes, to dig up, salvage and return objects to their owners, and to clear trails and pathways. These nuns are living examples that traditional gender roles need not necessarily spell out the manner in which women should tend to womanly chores of a menial nature, leaving to men more overtly masculine tasks, including occupying positions of influence and power.

Before the quake: The Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery in Kathmandu teaches martial arts and meditation to empower young women -- Photo, Mail on Line, India

The 300 nuns have refused invitations for evacuation assistance, to ensure their safety. Their self-confidence and self-reliance leads them to use their energy and their skills to help others. The leader of the Ladakh-Based Drupka order, the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, stated: "I was expecting the nuns over there to be under trauma. Many people were saying that they should be evacuated but they decided to stay back and help others.

 

"It's raining continuously, earthquakes are repeatedly happening, the walls are falling and none of them can go back to their rooms so they have had to camp in the garden. Despite all these problems, they are willing to help." They are not called the "Kung fu nuns of Kathmandu", after all, for no reason. They began their training years ago, in anticipation of responding as they have, to situations such as this.

They use the ancient Chinese martial art for many reasons, not the least of which is meditation. But they also engage themselves deeply with a sense of obligation, in community work, campaigning as well against toxic waste, and are exponents both in voice and in deed for women's empowerment. They have engaged in walkathons to protest the prevalence of plastic products and the wastefulness of thoughtless everyday life.

They are the "kung fu nuns of Kathmandu".

In Perspective

"There are more Western doctors, more facilities, more medical supplies and more equipment to manage that situation in the Everest Base Camp than anywhere else in Nepal."
"Any climber who has any sense of attachment to Nepal, or any sense of fairness or right or wrong would agree."
"Those climbers are up there because of a chosen avocation, or sport, and they're fine. And I think they all know that. You might see some occasional pleas or cries for help, but they have to think, 'I'm up here by choice."
"It's with manual labour and toil and engineering and risk that the sherpas go in there [Khumbu ice fall infrastructure] and put the ice screws in and fix the lines and position the ladders. That's why we hear reports of climbers being trapped. Some of the climbers I talked to today said they can't go down to get this thing fixed."
"Some are talking about taking helicopters to shuttle them back and down across through the icefalls so they don't have to climb. But I sure hope somebody is saying they should use those helicopters elsewhere in Nepal because there should be a great deal of demand for that equipment elsewhere."
Wally Berg, Canadian mountaineer

In this photo, released on Monday, a rescue helicopter is shown at Mount Everest’s south base camp. (6summitschallenge.com/Reuters)

"We all rushed out to the open and the next moment a huge wall of snow just piled on me."
"I managed to dig out of what could easily have been my grave. I wiggled and used my hands as claws to dig as much as I could."
"I was suffocating. I could not breathe. But I knew I had to survive."
Bhim Bahadur Khatri, 35, sherpa cook, Everest Base Camp

What Mr. Berg, who operates an adventure company out of Canmore, Alberta, and who has himself climbed Mount Everest repeatedly feared, has in fact occurred. A handful of helicopters was diverted from search-and-rescue operations in Nepal's earthquaked zone, to rescue the estimated 170 people who were on the slopes of the world's tallest mountain. A relative handful remain, and will be taken off the mountain by Wednesday.

There were nineteen climbers whom the avalanche killed -- triggered by the 7.8- magnitude earthquake that devastated Kathmandu and surrounding area -- whose bodies will be taken off the mountain for return to their families and burial. The injured are being treated. The death toll in Nepal itself, with many of its isolated villages still to be reached by rescue crews, has surmounted five thousand, with countless thousands of people having sustained injuries, some very serious.

Mr. Berg's observation that the mountaineers take risks when they decide to trek up Mount Everest is quite correct; most of them are fairly well provisioned, with food enough and medicines to last them weeks. But in the event of emergencies and when natural events occur of such disastrous proportions people tend to lose perspective, knowing that many have died and there is no guarantee that aftershocks causing other avalanches will not recur, and they prefer to be evacuated, their aspirations of summiting shattered.

The reality is, as Mr. Berg has observed, people die on the mountain year on year. As did 16 sherpas last year, in one fell swoop in the Khumbu Icefield area, cancelling that season's climbs. The Khumbu Icefall, a perilous portion of the climb, just above Base Camp, has become infinitely more treacherous since the avalanche began with huge rocks being dislodged from a promontory directly above the Icefall, rendering all the preparatory ascent/descent work done annually by sherpa volunteers useless, and stranding mountaineers on the slopes above.

Some climbers posted appeals on social media for help. "Huge disaster. Helped, searched and rescued victims through huge debris area. Many dead. Much more badly injured. More to die if not heli ASAP", wrote Romanian climber Alex Gavan. The response to his appeal ensured that those on the mountain were taken away from the area posing such potential danger to them.


A rescue chopper carrying people down to Everest base camp on Monday. (Nima Namgyal Sherpa/AP)

Mr. Berg's long experience in Nepal and his care for the country and its people were front and centre in his statements, that many from within the climbing community have been assailed with grim sadness and yet a sense of inevitability. Seated on a major fault line, Nepal is quite simply vulnerable to the tectonic shifts taking place in the bowels of the Earth where an Indian plate and a Nepali plate grind against each other, gradually shifting Nepal itself under Mount Everest in incremental steps long into the geological future.

There is a "long and deep sentimental and emotional attachment to the people. They are humble; they have great integrity and inner spiritual strength and resilience. We care for them and we're thinking about them. A lot of us from the developed world who have been to Nepal and love it, I know, are wrenched with this loss of those ancient medieval streets that we used to walk", stated Wally Berg, of a country and a people that have taken his heart.

A Day In The Life of Nepal

"Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rockfalls."
"It will likely be helicopter access only."
Matt Darvas, World Vision aid group

"We don't feel safe at all. There have been so many aftershocks. It doesn't stop."
"I've watched hundreds of bodies burn. I never thought I'd see so many ... Nepal should learn a lesson from this. They should realize proper buildings should be built."
"There should be open spaces people can run to."
Rajendra Dhungana, at Pashuputi Nath Temple, Kathmandu

Volunteers and emergency workers search for bodies buried under the debris of one of the temples at Basantapur Durbar Square on April 27, 2015 in Kathmandu, Nepal. (Omar Havana/Getty Images) 

Many countries of the world with special units aligned with their military set up for just such emergencies, have sent along to Nepal their specialized groups of search-and-rescue specialists, doctors, nurses, field hospitals and technicians, to help the Himalayan country cope with the devastation brought about by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the capital Kathmandu and surrounding areas on Saturday afternoon.

A series of aftershocks, the worst of which occurred the following day with a magnitude 6.7 shock had residents of the city rushing again for wide open spaces to protect themselves from the crush of falling debris. The nation is in shock, not only for the thousands who have died and all those many more thousands who have been injured, but also for the irreplaceable loss of its heritage sites. Nepal has the most heritage sites of any other country listed with the UNESCO World Heritage group.

Aid workers have warned that the situation, devastating enough as it is where humanitarian aid can reach, may be far, far worse in those isolated and now difficult-to-reach areas closer to the epicentre of the quake. This was an earthquake that was the most violently powerful in more than 80 years to hit Nepal, destroying swaths of the most ancient portions of the city of Kathmandu. It was powerful enough that people also died in India, Bangladesh, Tibet and Pakistan.

Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press  Trailokya Mohan Narayan Temple, Kathmandu, Volunteers help remove debris of a three-story temple.

Rescuers, including international teams of search specialists, spent Sunday looking for survivors under the rubble of buildings with the wreckage of concrete slabs, bricks, iron beams and wood, complicating their efforts and breathing air full of chalky concrete dust. In one neighbourhood, a backhoe was digging through what was left of a budget-rate guest house, finding six people dead, and extracting a dozen others. Still, 20 people are believed to be trapped under the wreckage.

India, Israel, Canada, the United States, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates have all sent support to Nepal. The capital city is rife with warrens of small brick apartment buildings of poor construction. Those modern structures that are part of the city landscape by contrast managed to survive intact, while other buildings became piles of rubble.

Tens of thousands of people, fearing the results of further aftershocks spent Sunday in the streets, crowded and frantic with shock and fear.

People burn the bodies of earthquake victims at a mass cremation at Pashupatinath in Kathmandu on April 26, 2015.

Waiting For The "Big One"

"In some places there will be maybe 20 minutes before the wave hits."
"The gold standard is what was done in Oregon and that's what we should aim for."
"There is a very clearly defined set of tsunami problems that need to be solved."
Garry Rogers, senior research scientist, Pacific Geoscience Centre, Victoria

"There would be widespread damage, including thousands of injuries and fatalities and the destruction of hundreds of buildings."
"Overall the province [British Columbia] is still at a significant risk if a catastrophic earthquake were to occur today."
British Columbia auditor general report

The dreadful earthquake and following tsunami of horrendous proportions, took the lives of a quarter of a million people in fourteen countries on what was for those countries a truly fateful day in 2004 when Indonesia [200,000 dead, 37,000 missing], India [11,000 dead, 3,000 missing], Sri Lanka [31,000 dead, 4,000 missing] and Thailand [5,400 dead, 3,000 missing] suffered a tragedy of monumental proportions in the Indian Ocean tsunami.

A village near the coast of Sumatra lies in ruins

In the modern era, that incredible loss of life resulting from an upheaval deep within the bowels of the Earth's crust, leading to the aftermath of giant waves washing ashore, was almost matched in intensity by the 2011 earthquake that struck offshore with a 9.0-magnitude force, second to the Indian Ocean's quake that registered 9.1. Japan lies in a well-known earthquake zone; the country uses high-value technology to monitor such events, and the result was a still-considerable loss of 18,000 lives. The situation hugely compounded by a meltdown of five nuclear reactors.

This is an aerial view of damage to Sukuiso, Japan, a week after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated the area in March, 2011.                                                       Credit: Dylan McCord. U.S. Navy

In the Pacific, where tectonic plates on the Cascadia subduction zone slide past one another on their 1,13-kilometre cascade, geologists say that a mega-thrust quake is inevitable. Killer quakes occur in the area every 500 years. It is now 300 years since the last one according to scientists who have found evidence of 19 giant Cascadia quakes in the past ten thousand years. Those experts now predict such a cataclysmic quake is possible in the next fifty years.

"We should be as well prepared as Japan", agrees John Clague, an expert from Simon Fraser University, in recognition of Canada's lag in mapping areas most potentially threatened by tsunamis and "seismic microzonation". Identifying pockets within cities and districts more prone to shaking, liquefaction and damage is vital to protecting the population living along the B.C. coast, particularly the vulnerable area of Vancouver Island.

Pacific Rim National Park (British Columbia) (CNW Group/Transitions)

Like Japan and countries lying off the Indian Ocean, the West Coast of North America is vulnerable to earthquakes which regularly occur. No expert can predict with any reliability when the next large quake of magnitude 9 or more will occur, but they do stick with the 12 percent probability of a megathrust earthquake within the next fifty years.

When that happens, the ground will shake with an intensity sufficient to crack and collapse bridges and unreinforced buildings. Landslides will occur, cutting off roads, railways, and leaving millions of people without power, water, telephone service. A wall of water will race ashore to flood out of existence resorts, campgrounds, and any kind of human habitation, while altering shipping channels and severing major undersea cables.

And now the auditor general of British Columbia has launched a full critical review of Emergency Management BC, responsible for the response to such catastrophes, which has failed to treat the issue as a priority; devising comprehensive plans to deal with the possibility of an immense quake and the following tsunami to make certain that as many people are alerted, to head for shelter on high ground, as possible.

While North America is not likely to experience the intensity of a phenomenon leading to the horrors that resulted from the Sumatra quake, a major disaster could still develop. Emergency planners in B.C. and the U.S. consider it likely that deaths could exceed 10,000, with another 30,000 injured. Aging buildings and infrastructure in Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle and Portland are clearly at risk. Damage, should such a quake and tsunami occur, is estimated to cost Canada up to $75-billion.

A metres-height tsunami crashing ashore and racing up inlets would destroy coastal communities, fish farms, resorts and logging operations. A detailed analysis superior to anything that has as yet been undertaken is required to understand where the giant waves, capable of travelling at jet-flight speed, might break land, to result in the most damage. Inlets and channels are capable of amplifying five-metre walls of water for maximum destructive effect.

Canadian geologists point to the work by the state of Oregon in this direction, where tsunami inundation zones have been mapped out in detail to enable communities to plan evacuation routes, and identify and shape safe havens for people to flock to. And at the same time work on devising methods for the reinforcement of coastal highway bridges to withstand such a tsunami.



Five-metre waves, which are expected to result from a Cascadia tsunamis, while potentially destructive are not quite the threat seen by the size of the 40-metre monster waves the Tohoku quake off the coast of Japan presented in 2011. Canadian scientists feel it is necessary that sensors be placed on the sea floor along the Cascadian fault for finer estimates of tsunami wave heights. Japan has done just that off their coast.

"We know the on-land measurements, but we don't know what is happening under the water. That is the important part for tsunamis", according to research scientist Dr. Garry Rogers. Living in a wonderful country in a province with breathtaking and varied landscapes does have its risks as a result of natural geology for which the province is justifiably famous.

Credit John Clague

Iceland volcano: Bardarbunga hit by 5.7 earthquake

BBC News online -- 26 August 2014

Local authorities have closed roads leading to the area and evacuated several hundred people

Continue reading the main story

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Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano was hit by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake on Tuesday morning, the largest since tremors began in the area last week.

The country's Met Office said despite the shock - the fourth magnitude five quake in 48 hours - there is still no sign of a volcanic eruption.
On Sunday, Iceland lowered the aviation risk to its second highest level.
Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in 2010, producing ash that disrupted air travel across Europe.
Bardarbunga is in a different range to Eyjafjallajokull, but the intense seismic activity has raised fears that an eruption could cause similar travel chaos.

No surface movement "There was one event during the night. It was a magnitude 5.7 [earthquake], the largest in this series," Palni Erlendsson, a geologist at Iceland's Met Office told Reuters news agency.
The activity was still deep below ground, Mr Erlendsson said, adding there had been no signs of movement close to the surface.
"We still can't say whether [the activity] will cease, continue like this for a while or erupt. It's impossible to say," he said.

The Vatnajokull glacier sits on top of the volcanic range. There are fears an eruption could cause flooding

The magnitude five earthquakes are the strongest to hit the Bardarbunga region since 1996.
The Met Office said the latest large tremor occurred at 01:26 GMT to the north of Bardarbunga, 6km (3.7 miles) below the surface, near the rim of Dyngjujokull, another nearby volcano.
Bardarbunga and Dyngjujokull are part of a large volcano system hidden beneath the 500m-thick (1,600ft) Vatnajokull glacier in central Iceland.
The region, more than 300km (190 miles) from the capital Reykjavik, has no permanent residents but sits within a national park popular with tourists. Several hundred people have been evacuated from the area.
Authorities have previously warned that any eruption could result in flooding north of the glacier.
But experts said the activity was migrating north, with the tip of the movement already 10km (6 miles) outside the glacier.
Scientists believe the earthquakes are a result of magma flowing out from beneath the volcano, causing a change in pressure.
This movement could stop, reducing the seismic activity, or the magma could reach the surface and lead to an eruption.
On Sunday, Iceland lowered its level of alert to the aviation industry from red, warning of an imminent eruption, to its second-highest level, orange.
Airspace over the site has been closed, but all Icelandic airports currently remain open, authorities say.
The Eyjafjallajokull eruption in April 2010 caused the largest closure of European airspace since World War Two, with losses estimated at between 1.5bn and 2.5bn euros (£1.3bn-2.2bn).