After deadly Nepal floods, Central Pa. Bhutanese and Nepali communities rally to help

Community members are holding vigils, praying for victims and raising money to support rescue and recovery efforts.

• Katie Knol/WITF
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  Katie Knol is WITF's General Assignment Reporter & Host.
  
  She graduated from Penn State University in 2024, earning bachelor's degrees in journalism and political science. She has also worked at WPSU, the News Lab at Penn State, The Daily Collegian and CommRadio.

Central Pennsylvania’s Bhutanese and Nepali communities are grieving after last week’s flash floods in Nepal and China killed at least 1,000 people and left thousands more missing.

The communities have held candlelight vigils, gathered for prayers and launched fundraising campaigns to support rescue and recovery efforts.

Narad Adhikari, a former refugee from Bhutan, a social worker in Harrisburg and a leader in the Central Pa. Bhutanese community, said he learned about the flooding through media coverage.

He said his own family and friends are safe, but he remains connected with people in Nepal, including a local reporter who provides updates from the affected area.

“Everything was washed away by the river, and it was very painful,” Adhikari said. “We were shocked to hear that. We never expected such a thing would happen.”

The flooding was triggered by a landslide and a glacier collapse that sent debris, water and mud through communities in the mountainous region. The disaster struck with little warning.

Right when the news broke, Adhikari said the local community immediately began to organize.

“We started gathering together, expressing our solidarity and support, humanitarian support and moral support, and we started praying,” he said. “We are trying to raise the financial support also, as part of our humanitarian support to them.”

Fundraising efforts

Delivering humanitarian aid to the mountainous region of Nepal is difficult. Flooding and landslides have destroyed roads, leaving some communities difficult to reach. Aid organizations have relied on helicopters to deliver food, water and other supplies.

The Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio is leading a fundraising effort involving Bhutanese-Nepali communities across the United States. As of Sept. 2, its GoFundMe campaign raised over $68,000 for food and water, temporary shelter, basic necessities and recovery assistance.

Tika Dhungana, founding president of the Bhutanese Community in Central Pennsylvania and the Budha Khari Foundation, said his family in Nepal doesn’t live near the affected region. Still, he said, the disaster has been difficult to process.

“We feel like all Nepali people are our family, so we have the same type of affection and the same type of heart-murmuring experience with this news,” he said.

The Budha Khari Foundation hosted a candlelight vigil Monday night in Harrisburg with other cultural and religious organizations in the community. Dhungana said it was an opportunity to pray for the people who died, their loved ones and those who remain missing.

‘Every number is somebody’s family’

Sudarshan Pyakurel, executive director of the Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio, said he also learned about the flood through social media and couldn’t believe it was real at first.

He said it’s especially upsetting because Nepal is not a major contributor to climate change, which could have led to the glacier collapse.

“People in Nepal contribute very little to this disaster,” Pyakurel said. “They didn’t get the benefit of the climate emissions factors that Western countries — America and Europe — reap the benefit of the development and cause enormous amounts of environmental damage.”

The country is in a period of mourning, he said, while rescuers dig through dozens of feet of mud to reach houses.

Rajju Malla-Dhakal, executive director of the Pennsylvania Nepalese Guthi Association, said multiple regions were impacted, and she has been unable to contact some people in the area.

“It is very, very heavy,” she said. “What we are trying to do is we kind of scramble together the whole community, and we’re trying to do lots of events.”

Malla-Dhakal echoed Dhungana’s statements about the entire community feeling like family. She said the sheer number of people killed or missing can be overwhelming, but each death or missing person is a human being with family.

“Every number is somebody’s family — somebody’s fathers, somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s son, brother and sister, neighbors and friends,” Malla-Dhakal said.