WHEN NEPAL CAME CRASHING DOWN
Spanish photographer Omar Havana moved to Kathmandu less than six months before a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck Nepal on April 25, 2015, devastating the Himalayan country. The Star spoke recently with Havana, who hopes to publish a book, to be called En
durance, documenting a disaster that took 8,000 lives.
Where were you when the earthquake struck?
I was sleeping at home. It was after 11 in the morning but I was out very late the previous night. I felt something moving, my wife realized that it was an earthquake and we just ran. We didn’t have time to grab our shoes or anything. We ran down the stairs of the building while we saw the walls basically cracking down.
For me, it felt like it was 15 minutes, but it was more like 15 seconds. I thought there’s no way, because I’m 40 years old. If I can run six floors in 15 seconds, I should be in the Olympics.
What did you do in the immediate aftermath?
We hit the streets as soon as possible. We went to the centre of Kathmandu and the first thing you see is dead people, injured people, cows, the magnitude of the disaster, the human drama. You feel totally broken.
I’d gone back to the building alone to grab my phone and call my family. After that, I went a second time to get my cameras, get my equipment. I came back to my building a third time to file my photos for Getty. Aftershocks were rocking Kathmandu every 20 minutes. Honestly, I’m thinking now about that and I was totally crazy to do that. It was a damaged building and I went up to the sixth floor to file photos while it was moving.
Can you describe the destruction you witnessed?
I went to places in the country where 95 per cent of the houses were totally destroyed, but Kathmandu, after two or three weeks, we could get back to a kind of normality.
More than the buildings, it was the psychological impact on the Nepali people. From April to October, we had over 400 aftershocks of over four degrees of magnitude.
How did you manage the tension between the urge to help and the need to shoot?
You feel it every second when you’re taking a photo. Are you doing your job or doing something ethically wrong? You need to document and if there’s something covered with debris, you drop the camera for five seconds and you help. But we want the international organizations to know what has happened and we want the world to know what has happened.
Over a photographer, you have to be a human being. The Nepali people were very understanding.
How did you handle the trauma you saw all around you?
Sometimes being a photographer, you put the camera in front of you and it’s like you are seeing a movie. It’s like the camera protects you from reality. The problem is, when you take away the camera and you look directly with your eyes, no?
The first two days, I didn’t think anything. We were sleeping in the street, working 17 hours a day, trying to file the photos as we could because communications were down, trying to find food, to find drinks, to find cigarettes. I think I started to realize everything — and that I was affected really badly psychologically — on the third or fourth day.”
Where did you find inspiration?
I saw people recovering bricks to build houses, I saw people helping each other. International organizations have been doing great work, but local organizations, volunteers and Nepalis have been doing incredible work on the rebuilding.
The local photographers, they were doing incredible work and I saw them dropping cameras and digging for bodies. And these were the people who gave me a place to sleep on the street. You’re pushed by them to work harder.
What motivated you to raise funds toward publishing a book on the earthquake?
The book is about the fight of the Nepali people. Their smile. Their survival. Their resilience. The story of a kid who lost his two legs, and his only dream is to stand again, 14 years old. A father emerging from a collapsed house with books in his hand.
I said, ‘Are you crazy, you can die, the building can fall on you.’ He said, ‘I lost my house, I lost people in my family, but I don’t want to lose the right to educate my daughter, so I went back for the books because I don’t have money to buy new ones.’
What is your hope for the future of the country?
Still you see destruction, still you see debris, still you see a situation where, one year after, it doesn’t seem to have advanced much. But when you see a smile on the Nepali people, for me, that’s the rebuilding of the country, that smile. This interview has been edited and condensed for length. Learn more about Omar Havana’s book project at omarhavana.com/endurance.