During the early hours of Saturday, April 25th, morning, both chemistry professor Dr. Laxman Pandey and mechanical engineer professor Dr. Bishal Silwal were awaken by their wives to learn that Nepal was hit by a 7.8 richter scale earthquake centered in Kathmandu, the capital.

Currently there a total of 5,000 deaths and about 10,000 people injured according to BBC News. The earthquake even caused an avalanche to form on Mt. Everest trapping 18 climbers, but they were rescued.

Dr. Pandey is from Butuwal but his brothers were living Kathmandu when the earthquake hit. Dr. Silwal was born and raised in the capital, so the majority of his family lives in the capital.

“I had to wait close to 24 hours…the lines were very very busy,” Pandey said, when he was trying to contact his relatives in Nepal. Dr. Silwal had to face busy lines and poor connection until his father finally contacted him over the phone.

“One thing is that the area is that nepal is very close to the fault,” Pandey said. This means that this area is very prone to earthquakes, but this earthquake has been on the worst since 1934 where Nepal experience a 8.0 according to both Dr. Silwal and Aljazeera.com.

Both professors main goal in talking about nepal is get students to raise awareness and donate to various different crowdfunding sites. Dr. Silwal said, “The best donation is the Red Cross, the do not take too much tax.”