Third Anniversary of Earthquakes in Nepal

The 25th April and the 12th May marks three years since the twin earthquakes in Nepal, which killed approximately 9,000 people, injured around 22,000 people and demolished around 600,000 structures in 2015.

Striking near Kathmandu in central Nepal, the earthquakes are also known as the Ghorka earthquakes (named after the district which was the epicentre of the earthquakes).

Of the 600,000 structures which were destroyed, 7,000 were schools and 3,000 government buildings. Dozens of Kathmandu’s heritage buildings were also destroyed, including the iconic Dharahara tower.

Also called the Bhimsen tower, it was a nine storey tower which stood at 61.88 meters high at the centre of Sundhara in Khatmandu. Built in 1832, it was a major tourist attraction which was open to the public from 2005 until its collapse. Work is underway to rebuild this iconic building.

The extent of the damage caused was around ten billion USD, which is about 50% of Nepal’s nominal GDP. Not to mention the devastation to human life and the impact this has had as their lives have changed forever.

At the second anniversary in 2017, it was estimated that almost 70% of the affected were still living in temporary shelters as the country was still struggling to bounce back. Debris can still be found lying around the country, even in the capital Kathmandu.

The majority of our friends, family and colleagues in Nepal were very fortunate, but a few were not and lives were lost.

The scale of the disaster is almost beyond comprehension.  You will all have seen the awful and very harrowing pictures on the news from Kathmandu and some of the villages outside of the Kathmandu valley.  The human suffering just seems to go on and on.

We started a fund back in 2015 that is run directly from our knitting base in Kathmandu and has been directly helping our knitters and tailors together with their families and communities.  We used the fund to distribute food and clothing to our knitters and also help sort out vital shelter and building materials.

Thank you for all of the orders from customers, partners, friends and family around the world over the past few years. We were able to help build new workshops in the past which were built strongly enough to survive this terrible disaster.  Some of the staff were inside the new workshops when the first earthquake hit and were able to get out and to safety.