Living through the second earthquake in Nepal.
ABOVE: Dr. Lance Plyer sits with a leprosy patient at Anandaban Hospital in Nepal. After the earthquake, Dr. Plyler led a medical team to treat various wounds.
by Dr. Lance Plyler, Samaritan’s Purse medical team lead
May, 2015 – It was a miracle. We were on the most dangerous part of the trail and were about to come to a village when we decided to stop and eat lunch. When we finished, we moved on to the village of about 35 households.
Suddenly everybody started screaming and running. A second earthquake was happening. A huge landslide occurred right in front of us. It crushed eight cows. Dust was everywhere. If we hadn’t eaten lunch early, we would have been underneath it with the cows. Instead, we were sitting on a porch, talking with the people in the village.
The women continued screaming because two little girls were out there with the goats, right in the path of the landslide. When the rocks stopped falling for a while, the dad ran as fast as he could past the landslide and grabbed his daughters. I don’t know how they managed to escape.
As they were coming back, the rocks began falling again. I couldn’t believe the timing. The rocks just barely missed them as the dad brought his girls back to safety.
We’ve counted about 38 aftershocks, and some of them have been significant. I felt like I was getting ready to get knocked off a surfboard. It was scary, but no one got killed here. We’re all OK. Praise God. It really was a miracle.