7.8 Earthquake Rocks Nepal, Hundreds Dead

An anonymous reader writes: Nepal was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 today, with an epicenter 80 km east of the country's second biggest city, Pokhara. Its effects were also strongly felt in the capital, Kathmandu. Casualty reports conflict, but authorities have indicated at least 500 are dead and many more are feared to be trapped. Nepal has declared a state of emergency for the affected areas, and asked for international humanitarian assistance. India and Pakistan have both offered help. Some Indian cities were affected by the earthquake as well, and there are reports of avalanches on Mt. Everest, which has many climbers at any given time.

Comments

Pohkara is beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

Pohkara is beautiful with about 400K people living in the area. My thoughts go out to all the people impacted.

Only spent a few weeks in Nepal around Holi time and found the people there to be wonderful, generous, and fun!

I was there upgrading the wifi network infrastructure at a Buddhist Monastery. The monks need their youtube. ;) Worked on my karma at the same time.

Getting help to that part of the country will be difficult.

Re:Pohkara is beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hardly a hipster, but whatever.

Balding, middle aged, father, former athlete (Olympic trial level in '84) with an interest in travel, helping others, and Linux. For years, I was a low-paid government contractor at NASA working on incredible stuff. You've seen my work if you've seen anything related to manned space flight in the last 30 yrs. I'm positive.

Nothing apple here - btw. Isn't that a requirement to be a hipster? Me?

Went to Nepal because a friend of a friend asked - and it was once-in-a-lifetime. While there, I met with the local KTM Google/OWASP group.
To get to Pohkara, we took a 12 hr bus from Kathmandu (about US$9). Normally it was 6 hrs, but due to unrest in a city between, the 1.5 lane mountain road was blocked and we sat for 6 hrs with 2000+ other vehicles (probably 20K people where stuck). There aren't any alternative routes. Having long talks with locals on the bus brings a new understanding. Someone pulled out a frisbee and we threw it around with locals for a few hrs before dark. There was a Deep Purple concert billboard on the road just outside KTM - none of the locals on the bus had heard of Deep Purple before - didn't know they they'd rent a venue. I couldn't have paid to have this experience. Most tourist take the plane between Pohkara and KTM. We had stocked up on snacks and shared what we had with others on the bus. They shared what they had too. Nobody expected to be stuck in a huge lineup on the side of a mountain rd for 6 hrs in the middle of Nepal.

Life is about experiences. At least it is for me.

I could have stayed home and skipped over the Tokyo and Seoul parts of the trip where I was just a tourist. That's what many people would do - like you, I suspect. I have the time, enough money and the desire for travel to different parts of the world, meet different peoples and try to be nice so our overbearing US government isn't the only reference point for these people. In the 1990s, I worked in Tokyo 2 weeks at a time for a few years. Hipster? Me?

Oh - and I've never lived on the west coast of the USA. Sorry.
Hipster? Me? Nope. Now get off my lawn.

Re:Why would God do this?

[pitchpipe]

Just accept that there is a reason for everything, and He has a plan.

His reasoning sucks and he is a horrible planner. I wonder if he has an MBA.