The Nepal nightmare

Dr Imron Subhan, consultant and head of department of Emergency Medicine, Apollo Health City, Hyderabad, has been practicing in the field of emergency medicine for 11 years; but nothing had prepared him for the horror that he came face-to-face with in Kathmandu.

“I was conducting workshops for 30 doctors and nurses when the floor started to shake. After that the walls and objects started shaking and dust started to fall around us. There was concrete crumbling and a loud noise… It was nothing like I had ever seen before. Then somebody screamed that it was an earthquake,” says Dr Subhan.

As the International Regional Faculty (Asia Pacific Region) for American Heart Association, Dr Subhan had set up the Centre for Medical Simulation in Kathmandu in 2014. And from April 22 to 27, he and his colleague instructor, Dr Syed Nabi, were conducting workshops. “We were on the third floor and feared that the building might crumble so all of us rushed downstairs. The adjacent building had crumbled; ours had cracked but remained standing,” says Dr Subhan, adding that the street below was packed with shocked and terrified people. “A woman had a panic attack and fainted on the street. We managed to pull her out of the crowd and calm her down,” he says.

The tremors continued every 30 minutes to an hour and everybody was panic-stricken. “Our hotel (Royal Singi) had developed cracks and so we went inside only to get our passports. We did convince the hotel authorities to give food and blankets to the others. And then made our way to makeshift tents on the roadside,” he says.  

While his team made it safely, Dr Subhan and his colleague, along with hundreds of others, were stranded on the streets. “Almost all the shops had closed and no hotels were open either. Prices too were skyrocketing as there were only a few shops open,” he adds.

As the head of emergency back home, it was only natural for him and his colleague to go to the nearby hospital. “We went straight to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital the next day. We were there for more than an hour and their command centre informed us that the situation was fairly under control,” he says.

With that taken care of, Dr Subhan went to the airport, where the situation was made worse by the disgruntled tourists. The small airport was inundated by over 15,000 people, a massive number which it wasn’t built to handle. “There were sick people, people on wheelchairs, some were being carried on backs… it was a very desperate situation. We came across a software engineer, who hadn’t eaten in 24 hours and had no money. We helped him buy a plane ticket and let him make a call when our mobile phones caught a signal,” says Dr Subhan who managed to catch his flight and landed in New Delhi on April 28.

“I am still in touch with my students from Kathmandu. But I feel the situation will get worse in the future because the essentials — water, sanitation, food etc. — are bound to run out,” says Dr Subhan, adding, “Since I was at the place, I know what kind of help they are in need of. I am ready to go back and I have also gathered a team of volunteers, we are just waiting for the green signal from authorities in Nepal.”