North Bay Nepalese reach out to relatives, step up to help

Over the telephone early Monday, Eric Moktan could hear the misery in his homeland of Nepal, 7,500 miles to the west in a region known for formidable Himalayan peaks and now for colossal tragedy.

Moktan, a Novato resident who grew up in Rohnert Park, had reached his grandmother, Lilly Gurung, on her cellphone and learned that all five of his relatives in Kathmandu had survived the magnitude-7.8 earthquake that ripped the impoverished South Asian nation on Saturday, killing more than 4,000 people.

Like almost everyone in the capital, Gurung, in her late 60s, was outside, fearful that her house, still standing, would collapse as aftershocks continued to shake the ground. Her neighbor’s home had caved in, trapping the dead within.

“You can hear people crying, people screaming,” Moktan said, recalling their phone conversation. “You can hear the chaos.”

Moktan, 27, said he was relieved to know his relatives were unscathed, nearly two days after the quake. They were getting by, he said, without running water or electricity, cooking on kerosene camp stoves and huddling under tarps in the rain.

“They’re shell-shocked,” said Moktan, a 2006 graduate from Rancho Cotate High in Rohnert Park.

“I don’t have any words for those people,” said his father, Prasad Tamang of Rohnert Park. “I feel terrible for them.”

Tamang said he remembered a magnitude-6.7 temblor that struck in 1988 and was mild compared to Saturday’s killer. He’s been “totally glued” to the TV, stunned by the images of demolished temples in a land dominated by the Hindu faith.

Friends have told him that nearly every house in Kathmandu is fractured, if not demolished.

Jangbu Sherpa, a Cloverdale restaurateur who lives in Santa Rosa, said he talked to his 68-year-old father, Tukti Sherpa, on Sunday night. Like most of his more than 200 relatives, the elder Sherpa lives in Chayanba, a village of about 30,000 in the Everest region of eastern Nepal.

There were no casualties, but most homes are damaged or destroyed, landline telephones are out and the lone dirt road into Chayanba was wiped out.

People duck into their homes to cook, then take the food outside to eat, he said. While it’s warm in Kathmandu, with temperatures similar to Santa Rosa, it’s cold and snowy in the village and most residents are unaccustomed to camping, said Sherpa, nicknamed “JB.”

“They don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he said, as villagers fear ongoing quakes compounded by the prospect of mudslides or a flood from the lake above their homes.

Born and raised at 8,000 feet elevation, Sherpa worked as an Everest climbing guide, enduring fierce storms, rock falls and avalanches and summiting the 29,035-foot peak five times.

From the comfort of his southeast Santa Rosa home, Sherpa pondered the fate of his homeland, a peaceful but poor nation known for its hospitality. “I don’t know why God chose to destroy that small country,” he said. “All we can do is get together and start to rebuild.”

Sherpa and his daughter, Ang Hindu Sherpa, 22, plan to leave in a few weeks for Chayanba, intent on surveying the destruction of a school and medical clinic built by his family. In early June, they will be joined by a group of physicians from Stanford University, he said.

Their goal is to assess the cost of reconstruction and then come home to raise the money.

It’s been 15 years since Hindu Sherpa, a Santa Rosa Junior College nursing student who goes by her middle name, has seen the village on a hillside overlooking a valley ringed by mountains.

“I’m a little scared,” she said. “But then I feel safe when I’m with my dad.”

Moktan, a regional manager for a medical device company, said he is collecting donated medical supplies from Bay Area hospitals and health care providers. He has a wish list from a physician in Kathmandu, he said.

With help from Korean Airlines, Moktan hopes to ship a pallet of supplies to Nepal in a few days to help treat the injured crowding Kathmandu’s hospitals.

Moktan’s grandmother was just diagnosed with a stomach tumor, and he had intended to bring her from Nepal for medical care here. But that mission has had to be put on hold.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.