A PUBLIC prayer vigil was held at 5.30pm at King Street Place, Rockdale, on Wednesday to support people affected by the Nepal earthquake.
There will also be a dinner to raise money for UNICEF’s Nepal Earthquake Children’s Appeal at 6pm for a 6.30pm start on Sunday, May 3 at Coronation Hall, 23 Barden Street, Arncliffe by NSW Labor MLC Shaoquett Moselmane and Rockdale Council.
A ticket costs $60 and includes a buffet dinner. Tickets to fundraising dinner: rockdale.nsw.gov.au/NepalEarthquakeAppeal.
Donations: Red Cross Nepal Earthquake Appeal 2015, 1800811700 or donations.redcross.org.au.
The grandmother of a St George Migrant Resource Centre employee is among the more than 8000 people confirmed dead following the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Saturday.
St George Migrant Resource centre's vice-chairman Mikall Chong said the part-time employee grew up with his grandmother and cared for her until he moved to Australia about seven years ago.
"Nepalese people are known to have very big extended families, so they are still feeling very apprehensive until they get a call from their relatives," Mr Chong said.
He said families were using social media sites including Facebook to contact family.
"The earthquake and aftershock was very close to where the families of my contacts in St George live," he said.
Indra Shrestha, of South Hurstville, moved from Nepal to Sydney with his family in 2010 and was shocked to hear about the earthquake.
He was on Skype with his relatives when the call suddenly disconnected.
"I then called my brother, who is 20 kilometres from the main city, on his mobile and he was fine," he said.
His relatives escaped unscathed, but he said the event was distressing.
"They are alive, but people, including neighbours I knew, were trapped inside houses," he said.
The school he attended in Sankhu, a main town in Kathmandu district, was destroyed.
"I went there for holidays in 2012 and to hear that my school is gone and all of these historic buildings . . . it's very sad," he said.
"If the women were in areas that were hit, it would have been devastating for them," Ms Chan said. "The homes were intended to be a clean and safe roof over their heads. They were certainly not earthquake-proof."
- Habitat for Humanity Volunteer Gloria Chan
Mr Shrestha's two children attend Carlton South Public School, which has a large Nepalese enrolment.
Relieving principal Darren Galea said the school hoped to offer its support to victims of the natural disaster.
"Carlton, Rockdale and Kogarah areas have a lot of Nepalese immigrants," he said. "In fact, in recent years we have had more people from a Nepalese background enrol at our school than from any other language background.
"We spoke about the tragedy a little at our morning assembly and I'd like our senior representative council to organise a fundraiser."
Pukar Bhupal Singh, an international student who moved from Nepal to Rockdale to study, was in Kathmandu last week.
"I was lucky I came home early. My family is all right but it's difficult to get through to friends because the telecommunications are damaged," he said. "The death toll will rise because the count has only been in urban areas, not remote parts."
Habitat for Humanity volunteer Gloria Chan held a fundraiser in Kogarah a few years ago to raise money to build homes for female-headed households in rural Nepal.
The houses she helped build were basic huts made mostly from bamboo.
"If the women were in areas that were hit, it would have been devastating for them," Ms Chan said. "The homes were intended to be a clean and safe roof over their heads. They were certainly not earthquake-proof."
Sutherland Hospital senior emergency physician Gina Watkins said hospitals in the worst-affected areas were running out of medical supplies and fuel to power generators.
"They have some emergency generators but they only have stocks of fuel for about 48 hours and if they don't get further supplies it will be a problem," she said.
Dr Watkins is on the board of the Nepalese Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine and was speaking about earthquake preparedness at a disaster emergency conference in Kathmandu last week. She left Nepal on Wednesday and has been in telephone contact with colleagues in Nepal since Saturday.
"They were responding well in the first 24 hours until supplies started running out," she said.
"When the earthquake struck there was only one senior doctor at the hospital and the other specialist could not get there because the road had been blocked by a landslip. It is a very painful, distressing and uncomfortable situation for my colleagues in Nepal."
Dr Watkins said the good news was that the international airport opened on Sunday so some supplies were arriving from India.
An estimated 349 Australians had not yet been accounted for on Sunday — the same day a 6.7 magnitude aftershock centred east of Kathmandu triggered a further three avalanches on Mount Everest.
More than 2088 Nepalese-born residents live in Rockdale.