Update:
Two Nelson photographers survived Saturday’s earthquake in Nepal.
Douglas Noblet was in the village of Jhinu Danda when the 7.8 magnitude quake struck and he reports that he is doing fine.
Noblet is an avid skier, mountaineer, pilot and owner of Wild Air Photography. He travelled to Nepal earlier this month and was in the midst of hiking the Annapurna trek when the devastating earthquake shook the country.
He wrote to the Star via Facebook that there was “not too much damage in the village, however, some buildings did partially collapse … The shaking from the first and big one was pretty violent and lasted at least a minute.”
Below: Photographer and outdoorsman Douglas Noblet was hiking the Annapurna trail in the Himalayas when the earthquake struck Nepal. Web photo
Noblet then spent the night in Chhomrong, which is further away from the epicentre of the quake, along the Annapurna base camp trek. He stopped at a local police checkpoint to register that he was okay.
“There was another mild shake around 5 this morning,” he wrote on Saturday. “Otherwise things are pretty calm up here.”
He is also a member of Nelson Search and Rescue. “There hasn’t been much I can help with up here though,” he wrote.
He was waiting for news from the Annapurna base camp. “[I] haven’t heard much yet in about 20 hours,” he wrote.
After two days without Internet service, Noblet wrote that more tremors occurred on Monday for seven to eight seconds and another on Tuesday morning where more buildings were crumbling at Jomsom, another point on the trail, but no injuries were reported.
Noblet’s return flight to Canada is booked for May 7 but he’s not sure what will happen until then. “Only time will tell,” he wrote, adding that the Internet is “on and off up here.”
Meanwhile, photographer David Gluns was in Kathmandu working in an office on the third floor of an old building when the temblor struck.
“Yes, survived the quake,” he wrote the Star in an email. “The shaking was violent.
“[The] hotel near ours collapsed, killing many. Our hotel was slightly damaged with bits of concrete all over my room.”
“[Kathmandu] is a mess,” wrote Gluns, adding that many historic buildings have been destroyed. “The loss of life is even more devastating in what started out as just another day for most.”
Gluns had been working in Nepal leading a trekking group. “The group I was leading had left the day before the quake. I stayed behind to set up the fall trips.”
Gluns managed to fly out Saturday. “It was chaos,” he wrote.
An eight-hour flight delay had him stuck in Istanbul waiting for a new flight to Munich. Gluns is flying to Spain to walk a cross-country pilgrimage route.
The quake is the country’s worst in 80 years and has claimed more than 4,600 lives and injured more than 9,000 people.
"All is calm in Chhomrong," wrote Douglas Noblet, who posted this photograph on Facebook.
