Shortly before midday on 25 April 2015, a massive earthquake shook Nepal, toppling buildings, triggering landslides and terrifying the population.
The 7.8-magnitude quake and its powerful aftershocks would claim the lives of almost 9,000 people, and injure tens of thousands more, across Nepal, India, China and Bangladesh.
More than 600,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed by the disaster, with the epicentre laying just 85km north of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu.
The earthquake was the worst to hit Nepal in more than 80 years and created a massive humanitarian emergency, with millions of people left hungry and homeless.
Despite having no presence in Nepal at that time, Islamic Relief knew we could help ease the suffering of those affected. The first colleague to arrive landed in Nepal less than 24 hours after the quake, with a full team following within 72 hours to begin assessments, with our response starting on 29 April.
Over the days and weeks that followed, we provided food, shelter and other essentials to families that had lost everything. As weeks turned into months, we launched cash-for-work programmes, supporting communities to both earn an income and begin rebuilding their homes.
The earthquake was the start of Islamic Relief’s work in Nepal, which continues to this day. The close bonds we forged with local partners while responding to the earthquake have only strengthened over the decade since, enabling us to continue meeting the needs of vulnerable people in Nepal in the most effective way.
Responding to this disaster in Nepal also taught Islamic Relief many valuable lessons about how to assist communities that continue to inform our work around the world.
Today, on the 10th anniversary of the Nepal earthquake, 2 Islamic Relief aid workers reflect on the response.
Mudassar Shah, STRIDE implementation manager, Islamic Relief Worldwide
At the time my role saw me deployed to disaster situations as part of the first wave of response. I’d go there and kickstart the emergency relief and recovery activities. In Nepal, I led the overall response, including the scale up and the initial planning for longer term rehabilitation and recovery. I was there for 4 months and returned several times after that.
On the day of the earthquake, I’d just concluded a 5-day training in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and was on the way back to Islamabad, travelling through an area with no phone signal. As soon as there was signal, a call came through from my boss at that time, Umair Hasan, telling me a massive earthquake had happened in Nepal, and I needed to travel there.
I said I would be in Islamabad in 3-4 hours and would get the first plane out.
Umair Hasan, Global disaster preparedness advisor, Islamic Relief Worldwide
At the time of the earthquake, I was the regional humanitarian manager for Asia, so I had the responsibility to prepare for and respond to emergencies in the region.
Before the earthquake, we had already been thinking about moving into Nepal, because it’s vulnerable to disasters, so we’d been having conversations about setting up partnerships with local humanitarian organisations. This meant we were able to put some plans in place as soon as we heard about the earthquake and very quickly mobilise the regional response team made up of colleagues from several countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines.
Mudassar: My first impression after arriving in Nepal was of devastation. The airport was damaged and very congested – our flight had to circle for 2 hours before we could get a space to land. But what I also remember well was receiving a very warm welcome. The immigration staff welcomed us and thanked us for coming to support affected communities at that very difficult time.
Our taxi driver was also very welcoming, and he helped us find a place to stay because all the hotels were shut initially.
Umair: I travelled to Nepal a bit later, 10 days after the earthquake, and there were hardly any people in the streets then. Everything was closed. People had left their homes and were frightened to return. You would see people gathered in parks or spending nights at the side of the road but nothing else for about 2 weeks after I arrived. People were really scared.
Search and rescue efforts had started in Kathmandu but when we travelled out to rural areas, the destruction left by the earthquake was really clear. Landslides had pushed whole villages into a river and everything – houses, schools, religious sites – was gone.
Almost 2 weeks after the first earthquake, there was a massive aftershock. I was alone on the second floor of a building, and I thought I might have to jump out. It was really, really scary, particularly for people who had somehow survived the first earthquake. They were very scared to go inside again. That was something I hadn’t seen before.
Mudassar: We began identifying local partners and assessing the situation. Were banks operational or not? Were there stocks of food and relief items within the country we could source? Were vehicles available to transport supplies? How were the road conditions? Something like 15 out of Nepal’s 77 districts were affected so it really was a massive emergency.
After gathering this information, we started our plan but Western Union and all the banks were closed so there was no way of getting money. I became a bit emotional one night because I couldn’t see the point in us being there if we couldn’t do anything. But eventually, the team decided to pool the money we had with us and buy supplies ourselves. Early the next morning, we went to the market and bought rice, tinned food and other items, packing them into the small car we’d rented to take to communities.
Umair: The local communities, partners and business owners were very generous and compassionate, so with their help, we were able to source and bring food items into a rural village within a week of the disaster.
Mudassar: After some time, Western Union was working again and Kathmandu was full of international relief agencies, so we identified a more remote area where help had not reached, Sindhuapalchok. The drive there would normally take 1 hour, but that day it took 3, then we walked for about 4 hours, going into the communities, assessing the damage and hearing from local people about their needs.
This laid the foundation for a large-scale emergency response and a whole new journey of learning for us at Islamic Relief.
Umair: After food, we began distributing shelters because people were living out in the open. We brought tents and tarpaulin sheets in from other countries across Asia as there were none available in Nepal. Then, we started looking at what materials we could use to build stronger temporary housing because summer was coming. As time went on, we also helped repair the water infrastructure and ran cash-for-work programmes.
Mudassar: We also built 11 temporary learning centres for children so they could quickly resume their classes, and repaired other damaged schools and homes. Our emergency response lasted 3-4 months with 3 years of rehabilitation, then development programmes continuing after that.
Umair: I spent 1 month in Nepal after the earthquake and when I returned what I noticed most was a change in the overall mood of the people and how they had coped with the situation. After 6 months or a year, you could see life returning to communities. Multi-storey buildings were beginning to be rebuilt, people were no longer so reluctant to go back and live in them.
The government was quite keen to ensure roads and other infrastructure were better than before the earthquake, and also to put in place certain disaster preparedness measures. They began making sure people were ready to respond to emergencies and had precautionary measures in place. What happened in 2015 pushed them to improve their readiness to respond to future disasters and a lot of learning came out of Nepal based on their experience 10 years ago.
Mudassar: Nepal, even before the disaster had a very vibrant civil society with very good capacity. They were well versed in emergency response because they had a history of experiencing small-to-medium-scale emergencies. On top of this, Nepali people are very resilient, and volunteerism is an inherent quality in them and this proved to be very helpful when we worked with local partners throughout the relief and recovery phase.
The team, including myself, had learned from mistakes we’d made in establishing relationships with local partners in the past and that helped us in Nepal. We knew that rather than demanding things from them, we had to support them as a peer.
We helped our partners to improve their systems, such as financial management, procurement and managing human resources. And they taught us what the culture was like, how to greet local people, how to make sure we were supplying them with food that was similar to what they’d normally eat. If you come as an outsider, you’re starting from zero, but partners from the same country and culture as the affected people can hugely improve the speed and quality of emergency responses.
Umair: For Islamic Relief, this disaster was unprecedented in terms of it being only the Asia team responding. There were 1 or 2 people from outside Asia or HQ involved, but it was almost 100% run by the Asia team. It was a great learning experience for the organisation because it showed we can build regional capacity and structures to respond to large-scale disasters. We could deploy people within a very short time and so initiate a response as soon as possible. We spoke almost the same language, which made it easy for us to engage with partners and government officials. We were able to incorporate some of what we learned into the STRIDE initiative in terms of responding to emergencies in countries where we don’t have offices.
Another learning point is that we stayed working in Nepal, which is a testament to Islamic Relief’s commitment to disaster-prone countries. We did not just respond to the emergency and leave, we have increased the scale of our work in Nepal over the years, building the capacity of communities and partners, as well as of our own staff.
Looking back, I think this is one of those times when we really made a difference. We aspire to reach affected populations within 72 hours, and we showed that we can do that. I think the fact that we’re still supporting vulnerable communities in Nepal 10 years later shows how successful the initial response was, that it’s been able to grow to what it is today.
Please help Islamic Relief support communities affected by disasters around the world. Donate to our Global Emergencies Fund today.
