In the spring of 2015 two mega 7.8 on the Richter scale earthquakes rocked Nepal. Between the epicenters of the two earthquakes all 200 houses and the school in the rural mountain village of Chupar were destroyed. Six people were killed. Santa Fe, NM resident, John Vavruska, a veteran of the Peace Corps and numerous treks in Nepal started raising money to help the village where his Nepalese friends, Uttam and Budu Rai had relatives. John knew Robert Reifel who was a member of Plenty International’s Board of Directors and lived in Santa Fe. Plenty agreed to be the fiscal sponsor for Nepal earthquake relief efforts.
In a ten-week period, February to May, 2016, John, Uttam and Budu and four U.S. volunteers, with a team of Chupar villagers built a six-room school with gravity-flow water and a composting latrine. When John’s good friend and trekking buddy, Robert Hammer passed away recently he willed a sizable bequest to Plenty to help continue the rebuilding work in Chupar and another Nepal village. The generous bequest will allow for the construction of water systems for both villages serving around 700 people in all, a public composting latrine for Chupar, retaining walls and a fence surrounding the school and completing the ceilings in the six classrooms. A mill for dehulling rice will be purchased and set up.
The school now has about 120 students in 3 grades attending it on a routine basis. It made us feel really good to see all the kids at school. The composting latrine and water systems have been completed.
Repairs on the water system: Materials (pipe, fittings, tanks, cement, rebar, etc.) were purchased and repair work was done by the villagers in 2023. The work consisted of installing a new pipeline across a chronic landslide gully, replacing five tapstands that were destroyed by road construction, and other pipeline repairs. In 2024 Uttam, the liaison and manager of projects Plenty supports in Nepal, will return to Nirmalidanda to check on the water system repairs.
New latrine system for the school: Uttam will also consult with the headmaster and villagers to determine a new latrine system for the school that is technically feasible and culturally acceptable.
This village of Sumlikha is about a half-day ride in a jeep from Nirmalidanda.
It does not have a convenient source of water, and a small gravity flow system will be built to serve 10 houses. Materials and supplies will be purchased and village volunteer labor will be sought. Reliable local partners that are familiar with water systems will help plan and advise the design. With village labor to dig pipeline trenches and haul supplies it is estimated to take about ten days to build the water system, at a cost estimate of $10K for labor, materials, and transportation.
A new project in Chupar will expand the water system to provide clean, reliable water to the entire village, not just one part of it. In 2023, the village leaders came to an agreement with another village, Pangar across the valley northeast of Chupar, to use four spring sources high in the jungle above both villages. The two villages would share the combined water output from these four springs, providing water to more than 2000 people. The project includes building spring protections at the spring sources and one or two stone masonry tanks to combine the water outputs. There is existing high density polyethylene piping, still mostly buried, from an effort by others to build a prior water system that was abandoned. Much of this piping can be reused and will be refurbished. Project manager Uttam will also purchase and locate multiple break-pressure tanks along the length of the pipeline since the vertical drop from the spring sources down to future taps is more than 2,000 ft. It is estimated that the cost of labor, materials, and transportation for this effort will be about $15K.
The village of Chupar in the Nuwakot district of Nepal north of Kathmandu had all of its 200 houses destroyed in the earthquake of April 25, 2015. The village school was also destroyed, leaving the children with little or no options for attending classes. Immediately after the earthquake John Vavruska, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal and his Nepalese friend Uttam Rai went into high gear. They began receiving donations from many kind people to provide food and shelter. Two weeks after the earthquake Uttam and John went to Nepal to distribute several tons of food, more than 200 tarps, and to see what more could be done. For the villagers the highest priority was a school. With no realistic prospect of assistance for the village from the Nepal government, they took on the task of raising more funds to build a new school that would include a clean source of water and proper sanitation.
Further efforts from 2016 to 2019 included subsequent visits to rebuild homes and a new school, built with local labor using traditional methods. Special Gabion banding was used for earthquake stability. Also done were upgrades to the school ground area including fencing, drainage, and erosion control, a water system for the school, school and public composting latrines, improvements to a small public water system for one part of the village, and a new grain milling facility.
135 Envirofit cookstoves were also provided to families that greatly improve indoor air quality and reduce firewood consumption. Continued work in this village resumed in 2022 after the Covid pandemic subsided,
Excerpts from the 2015 letter appeal from Lois and Ian Alsop for this village:
“As you know, Nepal has suffered a terrible earthquake – in fact two earthquakes, one on April 25 and the second on May 12th. Our son Vajra was in Kathmandu, where he was born, for both quakes and witnessed some of the terrible destruction and loss of life in the Durbar square of Kathmandu where he lives. Like many people, we immediately responded by giving donations to various institutions dedicated to disaster relief. It soon became apparent that much of the most immediate and effective relief work was being done by small groups of Nepalis and expat foreigners who were supplying relief to communities they knew and had a connection with.”
“One friend in Santa Fe, John Vavruska, set up a mini relief project for the village of Chupar, ancestral home of other mutual Nepali friends in Santa Fe, Uttam and Budu Rai, funneling donations through a small non-profit: Plenty International. His effort has inspired us. Just after the first quake, Vajra visited Halchok, the village where we lived for over ten years in the 1980s and 1990s. There had been widespread destruction of the poorer houses of the village – 56 houses collapsed (out of maybe 100?). All the old houses, gone. It’s as if an entire memory has been erased. He realized that most of the destruction happened in the mountain villages, in the stone houses. With the eager participation of the Nepali staff in the office we work with in Nepal, we were able to send up a shipment of food and essential supplies to the homeless villagers encamped below the ruins. We are now planning to provide supplies for more substantial temporary housing, food, sanitation and other priorities.”
We are in the final stages of our building phase and nearing the end of our project. We have completed a total of four new houses after the initial post-earthquake stage of providing food, medicine and temporary shelter to the people of Halchok village. We became involved with a local company, Metalwood, which is at the forefront of a new, earthquake-resistant type of metal frame construction which we decided would suit the needs of the village and could be done with village labor and their designs. Three houses were built by Metalwood and the villagers between 2017 and 2018, in addition to the first model house. The villagers were all engaged in the demolishing, clearing of the site, and basic leveling and porter work. Two more homes will be completed, after which we will not be actively fund raising. Thank you Plenty for your generous help in making this a reality.
John Vavruska:
“A team here in Santa Fe evaluated methods of earthquake resistant construction that would be appropriate for a remote village in the hills of Nepal. We considered many factors, and chose improvements to the traditional building method that are affordable and use locally available materials. Frequent “through-stones” (large flat stones that span the width of the walls), single story construction, and an appropriate length-to-width ratio for a building all improve earthquake survivability. Along with these practices, we adopted a key enhancement: “gabion banding” where periodic courses of stones are enclosed in a mesh material.
Gabion bands were conceived after the earthquake by the restoration architect Randolph Langenbach. These bands substitute for the wooden ring beams he found embedded in the walls of old buildings throughout the Himalayan region that have survived multiple earthquakes. To our knowledge, the Chupar project is the first to use polypropylene geogrid to hold the stones in a band together, allowing a wall to move during an earthquake without collapse.
Uttam and Budu Rai, Thad and Martha Clark Stewart, and I went to Nepal in early February 2016 to begin the rebuilding process. In late March the walls of the school were complete, and a “second shift” of volunteers arrived to continue with the construction. All volunteers from the U.S. paid their own way to Nepal. The project paid Uttam’s and Budu’s transportation costs as they were essential to the entire rebuilding process. The villagers themselves did the hard labor of gathering, breaking, and moving large stones to the school site, and building the walls — a tremendous effort.
In February it seemed ambitious to think that a school could be built in two months—but it happened! I’m very happy to report that the 6-room school is now complete and classes for grades 1-5 are being held in the school! Also, a water system for the school was built and clean water flows from the tap next to the school. A dedicated composting latrine was under construction when we left and is now complete. A new house was built for Budu Rai’s parents and extended family. Like all families in the village and throughout the entire region, they were living in a rough, temporary shelter. They are very happy to be in their own home now, built on the same ground as the old one that was destroyed.”
The Chupar project has attracted attention from other groups and organizations who are rebuilding in Nepal. A group from Nepal School Projects, a Canadian NGO, came to visit Chupar while we were there to see the construction technique. They plan to rebuild some 80 schools that were damaged or destroyed in Kavre district using gabion banding. Also, the Deboche Project, along with Architects Without Borders of Seattle have expressed an interest in the gabion banding approach and may use it to rebuild the Buddhist nunnery in Deboche, high in the Khumbu (Mt. Everest) region of Nepal. The Bridge Fund has shown interest as well. So, it is good that this approach to rebuilding is starting to reach out across Nepal, offering a traditional method of construction with a simple, affordable addition—gabion banding—that, we believe, will greatly enhance earthquake resistance.
The need for fiscal sponsorship of these village projects was initially brought to Plenty’s attention by then Plenty board member Robert Reifel. After a vetting process and with mutual agreement, Plenty accepted this collaborative sponsorship. This is an example of how just one person’s connection in a time of great need can bring people together to create life changing outcomes.
Plenty is a not-for-profit organization that was created to help protect and share the world’s abundance and knowledge for the benefit of all.
