More than 4,000 people in Nepal have died as a result of Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Much of the capital Katmandu and the surrounding villages were destroyed. Some members of Anchorage’s 80-member Nepalese community were visiting at the time. Jeet Tamang’s wife and nephew were among them. He says it took 10 hours to get through to them because phone services were down. His family members, including his siblings who still live there, all survived, but their homes were severely damaged.
“They were physically okay, but they were camping out near by the house in the open area,” Tamang says of his wife and nephew. “Cooking outside and sleeping out there. Which the whole city is going through that.”
Tamang says his family members are nervous to be there, and they’re not sure if they’ll be able to come home this week as planned.
It’s “kind of scary to walk around. Nobody knows if it’s going to fall down or not. Anything is possible. The worst thing is the aftershocks are really making more damages and scaring people around.”
He says so far, no one in Anchorage has reported lost family members. The community is collecting money for the non-profit Helping Hand for Nepal, which runs small-scale aid projects in the country.
Anne Hillman is the healthy communities editor at Alaska Public Media and a host of Hometown, Alaska. Reach her at ahillman@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Anne here.
