Help me, Calgarian pleads from Nepal

‘LITERALLY BAWLING’

A Calgary yoga instructor has contacted her family from a remote area near Nepal’s Langtang region, panicked, sobbing and desperate for help.

“She is stranded, she is trapped, and she is begging and pleading for help. She needs immediate rescue and aid,” said Tamara McLeod’s sister, Michelle Dack.

“She has limited food, some rice, some water, but it’s really cold. When she first called us she was in a panic, crying, literally bawling her eyes out.”

McLeod’s family has been wracked with worry since the Nepalese earthquake, with a death toll that is expected to surpass 10,000, hit the area where McLeod was travelling, followed by aftershocks and a massive avalanche and landslides.

Now McLeod is trapped amid rubble with four other people including a Nepalese guide and tourists from Europe, with no power and very little food. It’s unclear what kind of shelter they have sought.

“I am trying to call her back but I haven’t been able to connect.”

Dack says the family has received little help from Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department. There is great concern that only a dozen helicopters are flying throughout the country to rescue victims of the earthquake and avalanches, she said.

“We need our government to negotiate with the Nepalese to go in and rescue them.

“Everything around her is completely collapsed, and it’s very, very cold. I’m not sure if they have a tent or whether they’ve found shelter under a roof.”

McLeod, 24, has been living in India over the past six months studying yoga. For the past few weeks, she has been spending time in Nepal teaching yoga workshops, said Dack.

McLeod is among 10 Canadians with roots in Calgary who had been reported missing.

Members of the Calgary Nepalese Community Association are also worried about relatives in the region, some even believe they have lost family deep in the rubble.

“There have been so many casualties, in my neighbourhood, all the buildings have collapsed,” said Rishi Bastakoti of the Calgary Nepalese Community Association, whose parents and in-laws are safe.

“My mother is slightly injured, the fence fell on her when she was working in the garden during the earthquake. But she will be OK. There are others with much worse situations.”

Bastakoti says of the 4,000 or so members of the Calgary Nepalese Community, dozens are not sure of their family’s whereabouts, and one believes some family members may have died in a building collapse.

The Calgary Nepalese Community Association is also planning a candlelight vigil Friday at City Hall in memory of the earthquake victims.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that Canadian consular officers in Nepal and India, assisted by the Emergency Watch and Response Centre in Ottawa, are providing consular assistance around the clock.

“They are working closely with local officials in Nepal and India to locate and ascertain the well-being of Canadians on the ground,” said Diana Khaddaj.

The federal government has also announced that the Canadian military will help evacuate Canadians from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu to India, using a plane that will drop off aid, all terrain vehicles and 42 personnel, from medics to search-and-rescue experts. The convoy is set to arrive around 5 a.m. Wednesday in Kathmandu time, depending on the status of the airport.

Department officials said 462 Canadians had registered as being in Nepal at the time of the earthquake, though this registration is voluntary.