Aftershocks strike terror into souls

Frequent, big aftershocks across Nepal have kept stranded Indians there in constant fear of death, especially in Kathmandu, following the snuffing out of thousands of lives following a powerful earthquake on Saturday.

“I was on the street near Nirvachan Sadan, buying a bottle of water when suddenly the ground underneath began shaking. People ran helter-skelter, screaming as the buildings swayed and turned into rubble. Within a minute, the area was filled with dead bodies and injured. Somehow, I survived. It was terrifying,” 23-year old Surendra Singh, a resident of Rajasthan, told Deccan Herald, recounting tales of the horror.

Singh, a clerk with the Rural Development Department of Rajasthan, had gone to Nepal alone. He was one of the Indians rescued by an Indian Air Force plane from the quake-hit neighbourhood late on Saturday night.

“People had hardly got over the devastating impact of the first tremor when a powerful aftershock came in sending shivers down the spine. And aftershocks kept coming frequently, keeping everyone in constant fear of death. I had reached my hotel by then but was terribly scared as I did not know where to go and what to do,” Singh said.

After a 7.9 magnitude scale earthquake, Nepal has suffered as many as 46 aftershocks so far with two of them being strong at 6.6 and 6.9 magnitude scales, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. After a big earthquake, aftershocks continue for days, weeks, and even months.

“Aftershocks were coming in every now and then. We were on our way to the airport when suddenly our Scorpio went out of control due to the earthquake. Our driver managed to safely pull over on the highway from where we saw buildings across the road swaying and collapsing one by one in the area,” said Dinesh Sharma, who was rescued along with his family members by the Indian government from Nepal.

Along with his elderly parents, wife and a daughter, thirty-seven year old Sharma was returning from the ancient city of Bhaktapur in Nepal to board a plane for Mumbai when the earthquake struck.

“We were about 20 kilometres from the airport but there was no question of travelling by highway as it was torn apart by the earthquake at many places. So our driver, somehow, took us to the airport through the bylanes of the city which was completely devastated. When we reached the airport, we found the operations there had been halted due to the quake. I was unable to figure out where to take shelter as my parents are very old and it was getting cold,” he said.