Atlanta Survivor Of Nepal Earthquake Recounts Wreckage
Anna Bausum tells her story to Rose Scott and Denis O'Hayer on “A Closer Look.”
The massive earthquake that struck Nepal has claimed more than 7,000 lives. Anna Bausum, a 22 year-old research coordinator in the Emory Urology Department, had been in Nepal since April 8 to do a Mt. Everest base camp trek. She and her cousin, Luke Perry, had planned the trip months in advance. On the morning of April 25, while in Kathmandu, what was a vacation quickly changed.
At noon on that day, Bausum was resting on her bed in their sixth floor hotel room after a morning of sightseeing when she felt was she thought was her cousin shaking the bed. They looked at each other and both ran to the doorway. They held onto the doorframe for the whole two minutes of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
“There was a lot of screaming,” Bausum said on “A Closer Look.” “You could hear glass breaking, things falling over. And just the sound … the earth roars.”
After the quake, they both ran to the roof of the hotel, which was still standing. Bausum said they could see buildings crumbling in the distance, and they decided to run outside of the hotel. They grabbed a few essentials and met with a friend in an open, grassy field so they could look out for falling debris. They spent the night in the field, sheltered from the rain by makeshift tents made out of bamboo and tablecloths.
They did not receive aid that night, Bausum said. She, Perry and others who had gathered on the field shared what people could grab from their homes. She did see Indian military planes that appeared to be on reconnaissance missions.
The only contact Bausum had with her family back in the U.S. was one text message she sent from a friend’s phone to her mother, saying that she and Perry were safe. She wouldn’t know that her mother received that text until she arrived back in the United States four days later.
Bausum said the aftershocks of the earthquake continued nearly hourly for the next day making it hard to help others. Although Bausum has medical training and had a first aid kit, she realized she was ill-equipped to help the injured people she saw walking down the road.
Bausum and Perry had pre-scheduled their domestic flight out of Kathmandu, so the morning after sleeping in the field they went to the airport. She said that although the scene was chaotic, “people were very civil and kept their composure. But everyone was very stressed.”
Bausum noted that the day she left was the day rioting began in the streets over lack of aid.
Bausum and Perry left Kathmandu after spending 50 hours there following the quake. She said when the wheels left the runway, she shed a few tears.
“I hadn’t cried at all before leaving there, and part of me, in my head I think, it was just a logical decision: ‘I don’t have enough water to be wasting any on tears,’” she said.
Bausum, who hopes to one day work with an organization like Doctors Without Borders, said she wants to one day return to Nepal.
“But I don’t know how much hope I have for the country to be able to support coming back because rebuilding efforts will take a long time.”
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