Footage of devastation following Nepal’s recent earthquake has rattled the world. But, for one Bismarck doctor the natural disaster hits home.
“My parents are there. My sister, her children are there. They’re still sleeping outside. It’s been about ten days now and everybody’s still sleeping outside. My house luckily is still standing, but it’s got a lot of cracks in it. And the problem with an earthquake is there’s a lot of aftershocks going on,” Acharya.
Dr. Pranab Acharya grew up in Nepal, living there for about twenty years. He came to America in 2008, but his family still lives in Nepal’s capital, Katmandu. Afraid to go back inside their home, Acharya says they’re now living in a tent on the ground.
“Everybody’s been sleeping outside. My father’s got a fever. I think he caught a cold sleeping outside for ten days, and then you’ve got rain coming in,” says Acharya.
He says Nepal has always been known as a high risk place for earthquakes. Growing up he says he went through many.
“I was sleeping and I just remember complete shaking and then everybody was panicking and then I still remember like every time it would thunder, I would get that fear back, and I would think that it’s going to happen again,” says Acharya.
But, he says the scale of the recent quake was unprecedented. With ruins in rubble and thousands dead, he looks at the heroic stories of survival to stay positive.
“I think you know every country goes through this and the only way to do this is to be positive, try to reconstruct back and try to create structures that are a little resistant to earthquakes,” says Acharya.
With his house still standing, he calls members of his family the luckier ones. He says it took him about six hours from when he first heard the news about the quake to get in touch with loved ones. But, he says communication has been made easier through apps and social media.
KXNews
Corina Cappabianca, Reporter
CBS Newspath contributed to video in this story.