job is all about. We had been thrown out of the station building because of the earthquake and we had limited resources to function with maximum facilities.”
“Technically, setting up an entire studio on the street while going in and out during aftershocks is not an easy task. Besides, controlling all the systems online was our biggest challenge” .
For Saral Gurung, a reporter who made it most of the affected districts, there was no time to think of his cracked home.
“We would work over twelve hours a day then go home with no home to go to. My wife and I stood under the eaves of someone’s cracked building all night as it rained. But the next day, I had stories to cover and I found myself on the go again, traversing spaces between collapsed homes, where people stood helpless, while the stench from rotting bodies terrified the life out of me.”
They were sent to the most vulnerable parts of the city, where buildings had collapsed, burying hundreds of people.
In the MCR, Khanal felt some reassurance when her boss showed up and told her they were going to get rolling. She entered the studio.
“The phone lines were dead and I hadn’t been able to reach my family. But I knew that at a time like this, people needed information and I was prepared to do my duty. So, while on the back of my mind, I worried about my family, I spent the next three hours in the studio, doing live commentary of death and destruction, as we received the most heart-breaking footages from around the world.”
Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, Kantipur TV had gone on the air with coverage on the disaster, becoming the first to broadcast the images of devastation to the world.
The very next day, another major quake measuring 6.8 magnitude struck Nepal again, bringing down already damaged buildings and causing further loss of lives. The Kantipur TV team could no more work from its building under such risky conditions.
“There were too many aftershocks. So, we decided to move out on the streets, just as the rest of the country already was. We got the Outdoor Broadcasting Van out and set up a working space on the street. And we called it the Street Studio,” explains Pathak.
His colleagues’ health was a concern to Pathak, so he made sure the team had access to glucose water and bananas.
“I even had to put them on paracetamol and anti-inflammatory drugs, just so we could go on. But there was no way any one of us was going to stop and my team’s courage gave me energy.”
While the reporters put aside their physical needs as they focused on the need of the country, the administrative section of the station tried to make sure there were chairs to sit on, a plastic above the head and enough water to drink. But the engineering team had one of the greatest challenges to tackle amidst the chaos.
“It just happed and we had to keep going,” says Matrindra Pradhan, the chief of engineering.
“We couldn’t afford to break our transmission because that’s what your
ABU News 13
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