A second earthquake finds the relief team on the mountain
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- MRN
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- Relief
The organisation that became Mission Rebuild Nepal did not exist on 12 May 2015. Its future board was already on a mountain in Sindhupalchowk when the ground moved for the second time.
We were distributing relief package in one of the worst geographical locations when earth quake struck again. Our team reached the isolated area via helicopter with the help of Nepalese Army previous night. Within a minute of earthquake, we changed our mission from relief to Emergency medial care. I am glad we were able to save many lives and still working on the field but feeling sad there are many dead around the nation.
Bhotang is a remote northern village of Sindhupalchowk on the Chinese border, roughly six hours by road from Kathmandu and four hours on foot after that. The team had flown in the previous night with the Nepalese Army: four doctors, nurses, a physician assistant, a logistics and support team, relief supplies and fly-control measures.
The account of the day that the organisation's president published later is blunter than the message he sent from the field. The helicopter they had used crashed a week after their operation. Two of the Kathmandu team, Dr Dikshanta Prasai and Yuvraj Sharma, were nearly killed on the mountain when the second earthquake hit. Two volunteers, Vera Leader and Nepo Lina, developed acute diarrhoea and had to be evacuated from the work zone.
The money for that operation had come from the Nepal Education and Cultural Center in Washington DC, which by mid-May had raised about $23,000, of which $9,900 had already been wired to the team on the ground. The organisation published the wire transfer fee, $40, alongside the amount.
Ten days later, the operation formally became a rebuilding organisation. It had started as Mission Critical Nepal; on 22 May it announced it was becoming Mission Rebuild Nepal.
