Survivors from quake-hit Nepal are back in their homes in Kendrapara and recounting the horrific ordeal they encountered in the ravaged Himalayan country.
Around 20 persons, most of them plumbers, have returned to their respective ancestral villages in Kendrapara district so far in the past 24 hours.
An estimated 500 people from Kendrapara were reported stranded in Nepal and all of them were safe, said Kendrapara Collector, Debraj Senapati, adding the administration was in constant touch with their family members.
The list of stranded people has been dispatched to Odisha government's Resident Commissioner at New Delhi for their evacuation at the earliest, Senapati said.
Working as a teacher in Nepal's Lalitpur, 35-year-old Prasant Samal witnessed the crumbling down of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu.
"I had been to Kathmandu on official work in the Embassy. The quake struck when I was about to enter the building. The earth shook violently. Before I could realise what was happening, I fell down. When I got up, I saw the crumbling structure of the Embassy," Samal recounted.
Stating that buildings were falling apart, Samal said it was chaos all around.
"Heart-wrenching screams and yells seemed like a scene from a Hollywood horror movie. Death and destruction unfolded in its worst form within few minutes. It was the worst nightmare of my life," he said.
The experience of Khirod Sethy of Alapua village was similar.
"I am alive today for being outdoors on that fateful Saturday. I was on the job as a plumber at a construction site in the Kathmandu Valley when the tragedy struck. I have seen people trapped in debris and dying. I had seen a three-storied building falling apart," Sethy said.
