HUGE SETBACK
CALGARY AID WORKER SPEAKING ABOUT 2ND NEPAL EARTH QUAKE:
Bruce Piercey (left) speaks with other Samaritan’s
Purse staffers in Kathmandu, Nepal, before the country was hit by a second
earthquake on May 12, 2015.
Calgarian Bruce
Piercey thought it was just another aftershock.
But when he saw the
faces of the children and mothers who surrounded him, and heard their
screams and cries, he realized it was much more.
A fresh 7.3-magnitude
earthquake struck a remote mountainous region of Nepal early Tuesday afternoon,
killing dozens of people, triggering landslides, and collapsing buildings
weakened by last month’s massive 7.8-magnitude quake that killed thousands.
Piercey, Samaritan’s
Purse Canada Asia Projects Director, was at the Samaritan’s Purse patient care
centre in Katmandu when the second earthquake struck.
“I will never forgot
the looks of fear on the mother and children today. I’ll remember that as long
as I live,” Piercey said from Kathmandu on Tuesday.
The centre was busy
with mothers and their children from remote regions of Nepal seeking medical
treatment, and Piercey was visiting to see how victims were recovering
since the April 25 quake.
Piercey and his
Samaritan Purse colleagues had just received a tour of the earthquake-resistant
building, and were sitting down, sipping water, and discussing how the building
had fared in the first quake when the ground began to shake around 1 p.m. local
time Tuesday afternoon.
“The couch I was on
started rocking back and forth quite violently,” Piercey said.
For more than a
minute, the building swayed as people screamed and cried.
“It’s really
something when the earth shakes like that. It’s so disorienting,” Piercey said.
Piercey described the
second quake as a fresh trauma for thousands of Nepalese trying to recover from
April’s disaster.
“It’s a huge setback.
People were just starting to get back to normal,” said Piercey, who arrived in
Nepal two days after the first earthquake.
“It means more work.
The affected area has increased…The number of people who need supplies has
increased.”
The building Piercey
was in is located approximately 80 to 90 kilometres from the epicentre of
Tuesday’s earthquake, and a Samaritan’s Purse team was stationed about 10
kilometres from the second quake’s epicentre, Piercey said.
“They’re stuck out
there tonight. They’re staying put because landslides have blocked the road,”
he said.
Piercey said
Samaritan’s Purse will increase the number of staff they have on the ground in
Nepal as the country attempts to recover from this second disaster.
“People were just
starting to rebuild their lives,” he said.
For more information
and to make a donation, visit the Samaritan's Purse Website: http://www.samaritanspurse.ca/
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