AUBURN — Local business owners are trying to rally help for their homeland following the devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake and subsequent landslides that affected an estimated 9 million people in Nepal.
The owners of Narals at the corner of Main and Court streets, Nabin Naral and his wife, Jeena Shrestha, say their family is safe, but they’re still reeling from the scope of the tragedy in their homeland — the worst quake in 82 years.
Shrestha, who works at the restaurant and attends classes at Central Maine Community College, said she is torn. She wants to go and help her family but knows she can do more for them here in the U.S.
Naral said his parents lost their house in the earthquake, but his thoughts are with the people of Nepal. “A lot of people — more than us — they need some help,” he said, “that’s why we try to reach out.”
Although there aren’t many Nepalese in Maine, Naral and Shrestha said they wanted to show Maine’s support of the victims, so they started a gofundme page and announced that for each drink and meal served at Narals, $1 will go to support relief efforts.
Naral also set out a donation box at the restaurant in hopes patrons will drop in whatever they can.
The news coming from Narals hometown in Gorkha indicates this will not be a quick fix as damage estimates and death tolls continue to rise.
“My town — a big town, like 15,000 to 16,000 houses — left only two,” Naral said.
“There is another town,” Naral said, “(Barpak,) three or four hours from my town — there is like around 200 houses — they’re all gone and like four left.”
Shrestha said, “It’s really bad. It’s happened to the northern side and the eastern side.” To make matters worse, Shrestha and Naral fear what will happen when the monsoon season begins this summer, bringing torrential rains to fresh landslides and a broken landscape.
“It’s been five days and in some of the rural areas there hasn’t been any rescue at all and people die without help,” Shrestha said. She said that while Nepal looks small on a map, the mountainous terrain makes it deceptively large.
“One lady — 72 hours,” Naral said. “She’s still asking for rescue — she says she’s trapped, her legs are trapped — she has a cellphone and she called them.”
Naral said his parents want to leave, but everywhere around them, roads have been destroyed by landslides, some ripped right down the middle. For now, his parents are relegated to crude camping with the rest of the survivors in his town.
According to Naral, his father has been helping his neighbors with basic needs. He broke into a rarely used government-owned building for people to store their valuables and recovered his gas stove so others can cook what food they can salvage.
Naral said he wants to be able to send aid directly to the towns that need it, citing government mishandling of donations in a landslide last year in which Shrestha’s sister lost her family.
Another business of Naral’s in Singapore has already donated money. He said his 15-year-old niece has collected $5,000 and another niece who is a nurse wants to go to Nepal to help.
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