Quake shakes students in Lynn

LYNN – A half-dozen Nepalese students crowded into Classical High School guidance counselor Franlinette Khuon’s office Monday, worried about the weekend earthquake that left them frightened for family members and friends living in their small Asian nation.Best known for Mt. Everest, Nepal is a rural nation where students like Ghanashyam Basnet compare Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, to New York City with its sites familiar to all Nepalese.”It’s all gone now,” Basnet said.The Associated Press reported Monday that more than 4,000 people were killed in the magnitude-7.8 earthquake.Monoj Magar said his grandfather on his mother’s side lives in Kathmandu and stayed in his home for three days after the earthquake struck.”They were scared; the earthquakes are not gone,” Magar said.Fifteen Nepalese students attend Classical and they have lived in the United States for one to three years.Ganga Darjee said her parents sat in front of the television in their Lynn home Saturday, weeping as images of hurt and homeless children played across the screen. Sanjaya Gurung comes from a small town one day’s bus ride from Kathmandu. “We are very worried, we are very sad,” he said.The Associated Press reported the earthquake reduced buildings to rubble, and there were shortages of food, fuel, electricity and shelter. As bodies were recovered, relatives cremated the dead along the Bagmati River, and at least a dozen pyres burned late into the night.Conditions were far worse in the countryside, with rescue workers still struggling to reach mountain villages two days after the earthquake.Magar, Darjee and other Nepalese students come from small towns and villages but they have been to Kathmandu. Knowing friends and relatives may have been injured in the earthquake is the latest trauma some of the Nepalese students have endured. Khuon said many of them are the children of former Bhutanese residents who fled war and persecution in that nation.They described living in tents and bamboo huts in refugee camps and attending schools where administrators hit them on the head if they made a mistake.”These students have been through so much, but when they got here, they wanted to learn,” Khuon said.Classical Principal Gene Constantino said the school will organize a fundraising effort to help Nepal.”We will do it school-wide: We want to reach out and help the community,” he said.Some of the students experienced earthquakes while living in Nepal. Darjee recalled an earthquake so powerful “I couldn’t even walk.”Rescue workers and medical teams from at least a dozen countries were helping police and army troops in Kathmandu and surrounding areas, said Maj. Gen. Binod Basnyat, a Nepal army spokesman.Contributions came from large countries like India and China – but also from Nepal’s tiny Himalayan neighbor of Bhutan, which dispatched a medical team.Medical and rescue teams from Russia, Japan, France, Switzerland and Singapore were expected in Kathmandu over the coming days, the Nepal army said.”We need help from many different countries,” said student Joel Baraily.Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.