Nepal earthquake: Halifax dentist watched building crumble

As the road heaved beneath the wheels of the van, Karen Furlong thought her group was under attack.

"We thought we were being swarmed from behind and that people were lifting our van up and pushing it around," she said.

Furlong, a Halifax dentist, is part of a group of 14 international volunteers with Global Dental Relief who landed in Nepal the day before the massive earthquake struck on Saturday.

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Half an hour before the quake, Furlong's team had been touring Patan, a historic city known for its temples and art. The city just outside Kathmandu has been devastated by the quake and Furlong says they were lucky to leave when they did.

"We were in a van about a quarter of a mile away from Patan when everything hit," Furlong says. "It was pretty scary. We had no idea what was happening," she said.

"Bikes on the road alongside us in the car all went down on the ground. Walls fell around us. A large building in the distance, we kind of just watched it crumble and implode."

Furlong's team is now staying at a guesthouse in a Buddhist monastery in Boudhnath, a suburb of Kathmandu. The school where they set up their mobile dentistry clinic has been damaged and they can't offer dental services. So they wait along with many Nepalese people who have left their homes, fearing the roofs may fall on them during an aftershock.

Supplies dwindling

The monastery is sheltering many of those people, Furlong says.

"They have had thousands of people in their yard, sleeping in camps for the last three days. And they are feeding these people en masse with rice and whatever they can give them."

Furlong says the U.S. embassy has offered some assistance, but she has seen little outside aid arrive so far.

"The Nepali people are helping the Nepali people right now," she says. The most pressing needs at the monastery are for water and food.

"We have had access to clean water so far," she says. "There's no running water for showers or anything like that, but we do have clean food and water now, although our supplies are dwindling."

Furlong's team is arranging to leave the area so they don't use up resources needed by local people. She thinks her flight back to Canada will happen in the next six to nine days.

"The resilience of the people is incredible," she says. "We spent the day yesterday with a group of children, ranging in age from five to fifteen.

"There were about 200 kids left at the school that we usually work out of. And they pretty well all have families whose villages have been flattened. They don't know how alive their families are. The kids were unbelievable. Super, super resilient."