Fort Myers attorney Sandy Ruffalo took what was called The Nepal Adventure Tour last month. But she instead found herself in the middle of an earthquake April 25th.
Ruffalo said she counts her lucky stars she got to see the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Katmandu several days before it was destroyed April 25th.
“We were really lucky because some of the people were going to do the sightseeing after the trekking and the biggest, most important area was totally destroyed so we got to see it,” said Ruffalo “Because of its historical nature, I don’t think it can be rebuilt.”
Ruffalo also considers herself extremely fortunate that the earthquake hit on a Saturday when her group was in the relatively flat village of Pokhara rather than on the previous day when they were hiking on the mountainous Annapurna trail. “If it had happened 24 hours earlier, it’s hard to tell what would have happened with our group because there were places on the mountain where there was such tragedy and such disaster that I don’t know if they’ve found the people yet,” said Ruffalo. “We couldn’t have been in a better spot, even though we were close to the epicenter. We could see the mountains but you weren’t close enough to feel an avalanche or rock slide kind of danger.”
When the earthquake hit, Ruffalo and her friends were taking what she describes as a well-earned break from their strenuous mountain trekking the day before.
“I had walked into this little shop. Three seconds later the shop owner grabbed me and as we were running out to the street the bricks were flying off. It seemed like a very long time,” said Ruffalo. “The shop was ten feet away from me and everything was falling off the glass shelves and rolling around the floors. It seemed like thunder to me but part of that sound was truly all of the people too because the people were all converging on the street. Some of the people were hysterical. One woman next to me just kind of screamed and then fell on the ground. Some men picked her up and moved her.”
None of the 40 hikers in Ruffalo’s international group were injured or missing. But the Sherpa guides who were assisting them were not so lucky.
“It was heartbreaking. Because the night this all happened, we were having a goodbye dinner in Pokhara with them, said Ruffalo. “And they were so kind to want to stay and they didn’t know what had happened with their families. Our guide found out right away that his parents lost their complete home and farm and their animals. One of the other guides knew right away that his aunt and her child had been killed. Many of the others had no way of knowing.”
As the rest of the group wound their way back to Kathmandu fighting against all the traffic trying to get out of the devastated city, they passed people desperately grasping at stone blocks and twisted metal trying to find anyone buried under the debris.
“As we were coming back to town there were people pulling off the broken bricks and piles of wood,” said Ruffalo.
Back in the city of Katmandu the trekkers found their well-built modern hotel relatively undamaged.
“Looking outside our window we had a vacant back yard where many people were living,” said Ruffalo. “Now there were many people in the neighborhood who came there because they thought that no building was going to fall on it. And then the rains came. The way I understand it, people were just getting ready to go back to their houses and take a chance when this newest earthquake came.”
It was this vacant lot, with the frightened Nepalese huddled under tarps, Ruffalo, said, that will be an enduring memory for her.
“The last night that we were back in Kathmandu looking out the window and seeing the people trying to sleep out there with the tarp over them and knowing their lives are so at risk and the next day the kids were out in that same area playing soccer,” she said.
Ruffalo’s following all the fund raising activities for the earthquake victims. She said one of the nicest she’s heard about is the Rotary Club's ShelterBox USA program which is supplying tents and food to families in Nepal.