Couple in Nepal: ‘The whole town is made of brick’

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Rob Stiles and his wife sit in a small café around 8 p.m. on Saturday after being in Nepal for only 48 hours. It was the only place they could see with lights on in the entire city.

They still don’t know where they will be spending the night after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.

The city has been dark for a couple hours and only a few street lights remain on. Outside the café, travelers have grabbed their backpacks and gear as they walk through the brick rubble. Locals hug pillows and blankets as they head for the large open field nearby the hospital.

A huge field is located by a stadium. It is where many people will spend the night to “play it safe,” said Stiles.

Stiles, brother of CityNews Meteorologist Adam Stiles, and his wife have experienced earthquakes before but never one of this size.

Earlier that day they were returning to their guest house to grab their GoPro – as they wanted to capture the city that he described as a relic.

That’s when Stiles felt the shake; the first thing he thought was that the whole town is made of brick.

He looked up at the ceiling fan moving and ran for the doorway with his wife.

“I had my wife and she grabbed me and we were just holding on staying in the doorway just trying to talk to the other kids just being like ‘stay there, stay there, stay there in the doorway,’” he said.

A few people tried to run out of the building but fell to the ground because it was moving so much, Stiles recalled.

Across the street from their guest house was an eight-foot high, 60 metres long wall. “It just came over and covered the road, it hit a car and buried a couple of motorcycles.”

The earthquake lasted about 15 to 20 seconds but Stiles said it felt like forever.

Once it finished they saw construction workers wearing flip-flops and casual clothing running through the street. Stiles said they were working up on a construction scaffold and they weren’t wearing any protective gear.

They followed the crowd onto the main street.

“Everyone was very… shaken up,” he said.

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Three to four aftershocks followed for the next 15 minutes and “there was one really big one where everyone was screaming,” said Stiles.

On the walk through the city the large intersections had turned into piles of rubble from the buildings that collapsed and schools were missing whole facades.

“There were a couple of bodies covered up on the ground as people were working to clear more rubble.”

Stiles and his wife saw a lot of injured people and the authorities were yelling while driving up and down the streets to make a clear path for the ambulance to get through.

Despite the chaos, Stiles said the majority of people were calm for the most part.

“I just really pray for the people and hope that they can get the help that they need to recover quickly,” he said.

Correction: A previous headline misidentified the couple as Canadian.

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