Nepal earthquake: Waiting in limbo for the flight home
Adrienne Arsenault | CBC News | Posted: April 27, 2015 4:16 PM | Last Updated: April 27, 2015
Nepalese passengers trying to make their way to Kathmandu to face the disaster
CBC News senior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault was en route to Kathmandu, Nepal, scene of the earthquake Saturday that killed more than 4,000 people. The magnitude 7.8 quake devastated central Nepal from Mount Everest to Kathmandu. Unable to land in Kathmandu, her flight refuelled in Lucknow, India, then headed back to Abu Dhabi.
We're in Lucknow, India. This is an unscheduled refuelling stop.
The flight to Kathmandu, like so many these past two days, circled for an hour, descended, climbed, descended again, and then when fuel was just too low, turned back west for the closest safe spot to put down, refuel and, we hope, try again.
- Earthquake affects hundred of Canadians
- Canada readies aid, disaster team
- Kathmandu was 'nightmare waiting to happen'
There are people squirming so anxiously in their seats. Many on this flight are Nepalese workers who live in Abu Dhabi and were sending most of what they earn back home. That means they are in the Emirates alone, their families back in Nepal. That makes this a flight of rather lonely looking men.
Birbahadur Tamana is in 16E, the seat next to mine. He has a great job in Abu Dhabi and an employer who bought him a ticket the moment he heard what happened.
He is a jumble of contradictions. He says he hasn't slept in two days, but his knees are bopping up and down with nervous energy. He says he wants the plane to hurry, but in a way knows it's already too late.
Found and cremated
He runs down the list of his family who died in the earthquake: his big sister Dooma, 33, his aunt and uncle and their 22-year-old daughter Buena. Buena, he explains, had miraculously survived bone cancer. Then … this.
Their bodies have all been found and cremated.
Now his aim is just to get back to see his parents. He will spend the night sleeping in the garden with them — that is, if this flight actually arrives and lands. How is he? He pauses. "OK, we will be OK," he says, and he seems almost sure of it.
Gokarna Adhikari is sitting in Row 15 with CBC producer Sylvia Thomson. He is heading home to check on his family after their place in a community north of Kathmandu was destroyed in the earthquake.
"I work six years in hard labour in Abu Dhabi to support my family, and in 40 seconds everything is destroyed," he tells her.
"I hurt very badly. In the three days since Saturday I couldn't sleep."
In 15A is a man who seems far too shocked to be certain of much. He is Chandra Giri,
He explains through translation that his daughter, Kalpana, 15 is dead. His wife is reportedly unconscious, but she is not in a hospital.
One-way ticket home
Their home is in a village just outside of Kathmandu, but there doesn't seem to be any way to get her to the city.
Chandra is a waiter in Abu Dhabi. Unfortunately, it seems his employer is not as understanding as Tamana's. The employer suggested he shouldn't take much time off. He used all he had to buy a one-way ticket to a home he isn't sure still exists.
With the help of Adhikari in the middle seat, he says: "I am not in a right way. I can't control my mind."
There is no control of any kind for them in this moment. Can't change what's happened and can't yet know when or if they will finally get to their beloved and battered Nepal.
Foreign Affairs has been tweeting out the phone number and email address for Canadians needing emergency consular assistance in Nepal: + 977 (1) 444-1976 and email: sos@international.gc.ca.