CALGARY – A Calgary physician working in Nepal is describing the chaos surrounding her following Saturday’s devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake.
Dr. Christine Gibson is living in Patan, a city outside Kathmandu. She was in her apartment when the quake hit.
“It’s basically like you’re in a washing machine,” described Patan.
“It’s like you’re in a boat that’s being tossed around and you don’t know which direction is down.”
Gibson says there are still a lot of aftershocks.
“A lot of people are going to sleep outside for a third night tonight, because they’re not sure of the structural integrity of the buildings.”
“Every once in a while I’ll hear a ‘boom’ and I know another building has come down.”
“We’re in a pretty sturdy building,” says Gibson. “We have running gas, we have intermittent internet… we’re better off than 99 per cent of people here.”
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The Calgary physician helped out at a local hospital within four hours of the quake.
She is praising Nepalis for their endurance.
“The people here are handing themselves like champions. It’s the local people that are heroes.”
“All these organizations are on their way to save Nepal, but Nepal saved Nepal in the first 48 hours.”
Despite this, Gibson says she thinks the country is in desperate need of money.
“Try to get money to as local an organization as you can, because there’s nobody internationally on the ground yet.”
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