We knew it was coming. But now that it is here, the world, for those of us who know and love Nepal, has shifted. Having escaped being crushed by a water tank, a friend in Kathmandu says, “My heart keeps shaking.” A text message comes in from another friend from rural Nepal, far from the epicenter but still impacted: “My house is not able to live.”
Nearly noon on Saturday, local time, a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Himalayan country, sandwiched between India and China. As of this writing, the official death toll is nearing 4,000, but I speak with confident dread that the actual casualties from this catastrophic event are orders of magnitude greater. These deaths are occurring not only in Kathmandu, the capital city, but also across Nepal’s rural hill and mountain communities .
In the 24 hours after the grand mal moment, the country has experienced more than 80 aftershocks, including a 6.7 event up on the border between Nepal and Tibet, at Kodari. Avalanches in the Everest region have resulted in the deaths of mountain climbers, foreign and local. Landslides further threaten homes and communities throughout the country, particularly northeast and northwest of the Kathmandu Valley. Entire villages have turned to rubble overnight. World Heritage sites have toppled. The human loss is impossible to calculate. The Nepali people and the nation as a whole are experiencing this tragedy in the wake of a brutal, decade-long civil war followed by nearly a decade of fragile peace and political transition.