The devastating scenes from Saturday’s magnitude-7.8 earthquake in Nepal have reverberated around the world.
And a member of the US soccer community is right in the middle of it.
A report in American Soccer Now detailed the experience of New York native and Nepal national team head coach Jack Stefanowski, who was in Kathmandu scouting players at the time of the temblor. He and his wife, Christel, and 4-year-old daughter, Lila, were in their apartment on the outskirts of the city when the earthquake struck. They were left unhurt.
“We’ve been lucky,” Stefanowski told American Soccer Now from Nepal. “The aftershocks have started to subside, but for two days it was frightening. I was at my apartment when it came. I had my family gather underneath a doorframe. The building swayed back and forth. The longer it happened, the more scared you got. The aftershocks have been terrible since you don’t know when it all is going to end or when the next one will come.”
“It’s the second ones that really create the terror.”
Stefanowski, who has led Nepal since 2013 and also served as the Puerto Rican national team coach in 2010, also shared a number of photos he snapped of the area’s devastation, which has left more than 4,000 dead by most recent estimates. He said the aftermath has been chilling.
“At night it is cold, rainy, and wet,” he said. “You have people outside because they don’t have the shelter. They don’t trust that their building will hold up. They are staying outside and kind of camping out. The conditions are bad – especially last night when it was raining and cold. There were reports that another big quake was coming and that created more of a fear.
"It’s just terrifying for people.”
