Nepalis living in Pittsburgh horrified by earthquake’s devastation.
The experts and the people of Nepal all knew this was coming.
Regardless, they were unprepared for the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that razed Kathmandu and was felt miles around Saturday, toppling historic structures, shaking Mount Everest and killing thousands in the small, poverty-stricken country situated on a major geological fault line between China and India.
In Pittsburgh, a population of native Nepalis and those who have ties to the county shared a feeling of despair Saturday as they got word of the largest earthquake to hit the country in decades.
Michael Kobold, the owner of Robinson-based watch company Kobold Expedition Tools, has scaled Mount Everest twice and has established a wing of his business operations in Kathmandu. He, along with a group of diplomats from the U.S. and Nepal, was working on the Kathmandu Firetruck Expedition, bringing more fire engines and emergency vehicles to the valley. Kathmandu, he said, has only five fire trucks serving a region of some 5 million people.
“This project had its genesis in the fact that Kathmandu is sitting on a fault line,” he said. “Nepal is a very precarious place to be with regards to seismic activity, and we knew that this would happen.”
The project was in the planning stages, but Mr. Kobold says it will now move at a more rapid pace. He was anticipating — and preparing for — an earthquake, but did not expect it to happen so soon.
Nepalis now living in Pittsburgh awoke Saturday to the news of the disaster. Many still have family and friends in Nepal, but efforts to reach them were made difficult because the landlines in Kathmandu were down or jammed.
Angdawa Sherpa, 31, of Dormont was able to reach his family via Facebook. The social media site activated its “Safety Check” allowing people to notify others that they were OK.
Mr. Sherpa visited Nepal in 2011 for the first time in 10 years and photographed many of the historic sites, including palaces and Hindu temples.
“All of a sudden those buildings … they’re not there anymore,” he said. “You’re talking about temples that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, that are beautiful to look at but at the same time it’s very old. And now it’s not there anymore.”
When Bibhuti Aryal, 36, of Dormont woke up around 8 a.m., he found his wife watching television with an unsettled expression on her face.
“I was wondering why she had a look on her face that something bad happened,” he said. “And then she told me about what happened.”
Mr. Aryal is president of the Rukmini Foundation, which works to improve the lives of underprivileged girls in Nepal. He is now attempting to spearhead local aid efforts and is trying to organize a candlelight vigil.
“We need to put some thought into it. We need to see what we can do, what’s needed,” he said. “[We’re] trying to think about ways we can not only rally the Nepali community here but also the Pittsburgh community at large.”