- Guest Post (Edited by Saugat Kandel)
This is a letter received by one of the One Stop Portal team members from a friend on the ground in Nepal:
A letter from a brother
Dear Brother,
We had another earthquake today around 7.4 in Richter is rumored. My original plans for the day had been to go volunteer to clean up durbar square and later on go swimming on the hot day. That's how normal life had become. But yet again people are scared to enter their houses, the government is saying it's 6.8 while other news media are saying it's 7.4. Maybe lower numbers cause a little less panic, but it's already there. Most people are yet again going to be sleeping outdoors tonight. People were assured that another large earthquake would be rare, but feel betrayed. The worst part is about an earthquake is nobody knows the answers.
I was sitting on my desk and thought it would be a quick one that would be over in a few seconds but it kept on going. I hid under the desk for 5 seconds but thought, what if this house collapses? So I decided to go outside while it was still shaking. I saw a plastic chair and tried to lift it above my head to protect myself, then thought it was dumb so put it down and continued towards the living room. I sat on the threshold of the door above the stairs for 5 seconds, then tried to walk down, then decided to stay on the threshold again. Next thing I saw was the helmet and decided to put in on. The helmet gave me courage to walk down the stairs, but for some reason I ditched the helmet on the bottom of the stairs and actually put it in the trash bin. And finally got out safely. Its so funny how confused and ridiculous I was.
Next I tried to call people but of course the phone would not work. So after 5 minutes I grabbed the keys to the scooty and decided to go to look for dad. But it took me really long to go cuz I kept running back up the house, once to shut off the gas, then again to place the TV safely on the ground, then upstairs to put the Masala jars safely. Then run back down, and up again for my wallet and keys and down and up again to lock the doors and windows. After much running back and forth up and down the house I was finally able to head out.
I hit the road and realized that traffic had doubled. Not just that, the drivers were as crazy as I was. People blatantly disregarded traffic rules in front on the police themselves, who were doing their best actually. I had to keep telling myself to control my emotions, how foolish it would sound if i survived the earthquake and died in traffic. I had to ride through Patan's old neighborhoods. The feeling was similar to the time we were little, when we we rushed through dark alleyways scared of ghosts. This time I sprinted past every building that looked shaky, but almost all of them looked shaky. Whenever my phone vibrated, I stopped to take it but could not hear half of what people were trying to tell me.
Anyways, I was able to get mom back home safely. Dad got back home a little later. We were lucky again. Plans are to stay put for a couple of days before going to work or doing anything else. Our house has strong pillars, and everybody is fine so don't worry.
Take care.
[ Editor's Note: The earthquake was 7.3 in moment magnitude scale, but 6.8 in Richter scale. The "Richter" scale measures the strength of the earthquake based on how much the earth's surface moves. The "moment" scale measures the strength of the earthquake based on the rigidity of the earth, the average amount of slip on the fault, and the size of the area that slipped. While the Richter and the moment scales have similar values for medium-sized earthquakes, they can have very dissimilar values for larger earthquakes. The unit Richter is commonly but misleadingly used in news reports to refer to what are actually measurements in the moment scale. ]
This is a letter received by one of the One Stop Portal team members from a friend on the ground in Nepal:
A letter from a brother
Dear Brother,
We had another earthquake today around 7.4 in Richter is rumored. My original plans for the day had been to go volunteer to clean up durbar square and later on go swimming on the hot day. That's how normal life had become. But yet again people are scared to enter their houses, the government is saying it's 6.8 while other news media are saying it's 7.4. Maybe lower numbers cause a little less panic, but it's already there. Most people are yet again going to be sleeping outdoors tonight. People were assured that another large earthquake would be rare, but feel betrayed. The worst part is about an earthquake is nobody knows the answers.
I was sitting on my desk and thought it would be a quick one that would be over in a few seconds but it kept on going. I hid under the desk for 5 seconds but thought, what if this house collapses? So I decided to go outside while it was still shaking. I saw a plastic chair and tried to lift it above my head to protect myself, then thought it was dumb so put it down and continued towards the living room. I sat on the threshold of the door above the stairs for 5 seconds, then tried to walk down, then decided to stay on the threshold again. Next thing I saw was the helmet and decided to put in on. The helmet gave me courage to walk down the stairs, but for some reason I ditched the helmet on the bottom of the stairs and actually put it in the trash bin. And finally got out safely. Its so funny how confused and ridiculous I was.
Next I tried to call people but of course the phone would not work. So after 5 minutes I grabbed the keys to the scooty and decided to go to look for dad. But it took me really long to go cuz I kept running back up the house, once to shut off the gas, then again to place the TV safely on the ground, then upstairs to put the Masala jars safely. Then run back down, and up again for my wallet and keys and down and up again to lock the doors and windows. After much running back and forth up and down the house I was finally able to head out.
I hit the road and realized that traffic had doubled. Not just that, the drivers were as crazy as I was. People blatantly disregarded traffic rules in front on the police themselves, who were doing their best actually. I had to keep telling myself to control my emotions, how foolish it would sound if i survived the earthquake and died in traffic. I had to ride through Patan's old neighborhoods. The feeling was similar to the time we were little, when we we rushed through dark alleyways scared of ghosts. This time I sprinted past every building that looked shaky, but almost all of them looked shaky. Whenever my phone vibrated, I stopped to take it but could not hear half of what people were trying to tell me.
Anyways, I was able to get mom back home safely. Dad got back home a little later. We were lucky again. Plans are to stay put for a couple of days before going to work or doing anything else. Our house has strong pillars, and everybody is fine so don't worry.
Take care.
[ Editor's Note: The earthquake was 7.3 in moment magnitude scale, but 6.8 in Richter scale. The "Richter" scale measures the strength of the earthquake based on how much the earth's surface moves. The "moment" scale measures the strength of the earthquake based on the rigidity of the earth, the average amount of slip on the fault, and the size of the area that slipped. While the Richter and the moment scales have similar values for medium-sized earthquakes, they can have very dissimilar values for larger earthquakes. The unit Richter is commonly but misleadingly used in news reports to refer to what are actually measurements in the moment scale. ]
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