At 11:56 am on April 25th, 2015, a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. I was in my hotel room on the 2nd floor, in the village of Tengboche, unpacking my things. This is my best account of the events that took place without any exaggeration or embellishment. I assure you, this story requires none.
I was facing the window of my room when I felt a slight rumble under my feet. The next few seconds would trigger a million thoughts in my mind. The first was that there must be a large herd of yaks or other animals running by. What else would rumble the ground? The rumbling quickly escalated to shaking. The noise was starting to pick up, and I looked out my window and could see the walls falling apart on the other side of the hotel. There was dust in the air, and literally, I could see the large stones that comprised the walls falling. I turned with a spike in adrenaline I had never felt before, and launched out my door. I looked left and right, unsure which direction the staircase was, and bolted left out of instinct. The hotel was now violently shaking. I would estimate a 5 foot oscillation side to side, and very fast. The plywood floor was rolling like a wave of energy. The sound was unbearably loud. The stones in the walls were falling and I could hear the sound of them grinding, twisting and smashing into each other. I had only ever heard this in a war movie or video game. This building was built from stones, stacked on top of each other. It is going to collapse at any moment, and I am going to die, or be buried in rubble. I bolted down the hall, literally running for my life, looking at the walls and floor, waiting for it to give way under me. It did not. I was at the stairs, and the shaking made it impossible to visually focus. I jumped to the bottom of the stairs, and with another quick left was now outside. However, outside was a corridor of high walls on each side for about 30-40 feet. I could see others fleeing ahead of me and I ran as fast as my legs could move. Just behind the people ahead, two enormous rocks from the walls fell, maybe 5-10 feet in front of me. Don’t flinch, just run. If you get hit, you get hit, but you have to get out of here. 3 seconds later, I was in the clear, catching my breath.
The next 5 minutes would be intense. I almost laughed out loud at the exhilaration of being out of the building. However, I could not see Venn yet, and another lady was screaming, asking where her friend was. Both came out perhaps 30 seconds later. They were safe. All around us were safe, the building did not collapse, only a few walls let loose. Now your mind starts ranging out a spectrum of possibilities for what the next few hours may look like. On one end, maybe this was just a localized shake that happens from time to time ( seems unlikely ). On the other, we may be overrun with dead and injured from other villages, and be trapped in this place with a wiped out path below us. It is important to know that we had zero information, and zero ability to get any.
I had moved myself over to the entrance gate to the famous Tengboche monastery. The handful of monks there had come out also, as the building took solid damage, and some walls had fallen in on them. We sat together, and I admired their mental fortitude. They were masters of emotional control, and showed it in this tense situation. I had just a thin shirt on, and it was sleeting, cold and foggy. All of my stuff remained in my room, in what was now, a very dangerous building to consider going into. You could see the walls had some bulges, and the short term stability was highly questionable. Imagine a jenga game where some of the blocks are missing and the tower is twisted. Do you want to climb inside? Also, I knew that all earthquakes come with aftershocks. We did not yet know the magnitude of what happened. Was there a bigger quake coming? Maybe. Were aftershocks coming? Certainly. All terrifying prospects.
Seconds turned into minutes as they always did, but seemed like minutes turning into hours. Some local people did their best to inspect the building, and took shelter in the common dining area. The room was single story with concrete ceiling supports ( thankfully this was a newer constructed building ), so with some apprehension we went inside. Worst case, we could hop out the windows when need be. I scurried upstairs, and grabbed my things in frantic fashion. I was not eager to ever see that room again, and this would be my last glimpse. I needed my things to survive. This would be the last moment I did not have everything essential strapped to my body. I ran back outside with my bag, packed it tight, and put it under some cover to get it out of the rain.
For the next hour I estimate, some other trekkers came up the path. We slowly gathered a small group in the dining hall. It was cold and wet outside, and we were all fatigued, if not from the trekking alone. I considered the option of heading back to Namche. However, we were in a localized high spot in the mountains. Nothing around us put us at risk for rock slides or avalanches. Venn said we should stay put until we get more information and I agreed with his logic. Namche was a city of rocks built on a slope, certainly not an ideal location. I reiterate that nobody had any knowledge of what happened or what to do in an earthquake. No one present had experienced this kind of event before, there were no experts. Each person had an opinion, but you had to trust your own reasoning weighed against others’ opinions to make a decision on what happens next.
The order of events a bit lost in my mind, I believe we settled inside near a wood stove when I wandered out to see what was happening with others. I happened upon a man giving an announcement. He had a satellite phone, and had some information. He told about 20 of us the following news. 7.8 magnitude earthquake, very close to Kathmandu. The city is devastated, many people are dead. The Khumbu region ( our region ), has taken major damage and the situation is very dangerous and unknown. No communications between local villages has taken place, but rumors say that Namche is ok, with mild damage to buildings.
The surreal nature of this is hard to describe. This is a major world disaster, and somehow I am basically right on top of it. I feel another wave of relief that I’m alive. Followed by more scanning of my thoughts on what the next few days would hold. Kathmandu was the only way out of Nepal. The Everest trail is treacherous, if not beautiful, in many places we had passed through. Is the trail safe? Is it even there still? Do we have enough food and water? What is our supply situation like if they entire mountain of trekkers needs to come down? What if they are hurt? The only way out of here other than walking is by a limited number of helicopters. Today was dense fog, so no choppers were going anywhere.
I reported this news back to my friends in the dining hall barely able to believe the words coming out of my own mouth. I now turned my focus to the latest priority in my mind. How would I get a message out to my friends and family that I’m alive and ok? What are my sisters and Tina going to think when they here this news? They have all lost so much in the past year, how would they possibly cope with the uncertainty of my fate? A Japanese-American girl in our group had a cell phone and a very weak, intermittent signal. We went to a high point outside to try and get a couple messages out. She was first able to text her husband and get a response, and was happy to let me try to message my sisters. I sent them both a message stating I was alive and ok in Tengboche, and to please update facebook to spread the word as fast as possible. My sister Heather responded with, “Hey, good to hear from you”. She clearly had no clue yet what had taken place. I was relieved, as she is quite intelligent and will figure it all out. Task complete.
As I was outside with the owner of the phone, the man with the satellite phone got some more news and approached us to tell. “I have some really bad news…there has been a massive avalanche at base camp, and as many as 80 people are feared dead.” He paused, and followed with, “I just lost a lot of friends”. The situation has now gotten much more personal and real, for lack of a better term. I gave him a hug, offering my support. I would speak to him a bit through the day, checking in on how he was doing. I learned he had reached the Everest summit in the past, and was an accomplished climber, so also asked him for any advice he had. I would learn later that he is world famous explorer Johan Ernst Nilson ( feel free to google his amazing feats of exploration ), but that day he was just another guy who had lost some friends.
This first day dragged on for an eternity. Some climbers came from higher up and confirmed heavy damage to the support villages on the trail. However, we would not learn much else despite Johan checking in with his sat phone every half hour. Aftershocks came, I belief 4 that were tangible. But we sat in our dining hall, enduring the stress, and the unknown of what would come. We were alive and well with ample supplies, and felt quite lucky. We set up our sleeping bags on the far wall for the night, minimizing the risk of wall collapse. We checked the windows next to us, making sure they opened for an easy escape in the middle of the night. We shared each of our stories of the day, in a bit of awe of what was going on. Finally, after a generous round of rum offered by some Russian friends in our group, we all tried to sleep. I was exhausted, partly sick with a cold, and getting rest was of extreme importance. Somehow my body knew this, and I got a solid night in.
That morning we had to make some important decisions. Stay tuned to hear what happened next.