Nepal

Volunteer Ministers and their search and rescue partners at the Scientology Mission of Kathmandu that serves as the base camp for Scientology Nepal Disaster Response.

Within 24 hours of the deadly and destructive magnitude 7.8 earthquake that rocked Nepal on April 25, Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers mobilized emergency response teams in the nation’s capital of Kathmandu to assist in combing the rubble for survivors and distributing needed supplies in the ravaged Asian country.

The following is a report from one of the Volunteer Ministers in Nepal:

“Another late night here. Today was the toughest day so far as the final official day of the search and rescue mission came to a close.

Handing out food and supplies in remote Nepal villages.

This is an update from one of our volunteers in Nepal: 

“Yesterday, we convinced two local boys with a massive truck to take us around to the local villages with the Canadian Search and Disaster Dog Association.”

“Most of the villages on the main road had been checked and cleared but people were living in camps of 25-50 people, tarps on the ground. They have no food, no money, and no shelter aside from the tarps.”

Los Topos search and rescue team in a destroyed home in a Nepal village on the border of China, searching for survivors in the rubble. Sixteen Los Topos volunteers were dispatched sent to Nepal by Volunteer Ministers headquarters in Los Angeles.

Three VM teams had been dispatched by UN Kathmandu HQ to outlying districts where there was hope there were still survivors. One group was attached to a Canadian K-9 corps called CASDDA (Canadian Search and Disaster Dogs Association). Another was the Los Topos team from Mexico.  All the teams were headed to villages four hours out from Kathmandu.

After a UN meeting with all of the relief teams, we have broken up into groups to search the outlining villages—apparently, people are still stuck and sending text messages. We are heading 4 hours east of Kathmandu to a village that no one has been to yet. We've joined a canine rescue team from Canada and the Firefighters without borders from Spain. Calling this bus "full" would be an understatement. We will likely not have service for the next 24-48 hours. No knowing how long we will be in the outskirts.

We are staying in the heart of Kathmandu assisting the local Volunteer Ministers in several disaster zones. We are working alongside local law enforcement agencies in cleanup, food distribution, aerial footage, and disaster assessment.

We did an early morning mission into the devastation in Kathmandu. Most of the city seems OK but the areas that are affected are bad and are like very eerie ghost towns.

There are five story buildings that have been flattened to two, killing everyone inside. And the stench of dead bodies on occasion is hard to deal with especially when you can't access them. On every building, there are shattered exterior walls threatening to collapse any second. It's pretty dangerous as there are tremors that could cause further collapsed.

Scientology Volunteer Ministers are distributing food and water in Kathmandu where tens of thousands are sleeping in makeshift camps on the street in the wake of the 7.8 magnitude 25 April earthquake. The death toll has topped 5,000 and many more thousands are injured. And entire regions outside the nation’s capital are inaccessible with no estimate of the casualties.