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Editorial: Local stories about Nepal highlight the need for aid

It takes almost 15 hours to fly more than 7,600 miles to Katmandu, Nepal. With that kind of distance, it's reasonable to assume few suburban residents have been to the small Asian nation.

But stories in the Daily Herald of local people who were in Nepal at the time a massive earthquake hit - and survived - bring the tragedy home in a way that should spark efforts to contribute to relief efforts.

"I feel like I was spared, so I want to give back and help any way I can," Libertyville resident Alexandra Gaulin told the Daily Herald's Jamie Sotonoff.

She had been on 17-day travel photography tour of India and Nepal. The earthquake struck while she and her group were on an airplane at Katmandu's airport waiting to take off.

Gaulin, 23, said she is thinking about doing some sort of charity project using her Nepal photos to help the recovery.

Those photos his group took, said Dean Tatooles, a former Inverness resident and tour director, "were some of the last pictures of those temples that are hundreds of years old, and stood for centuries, that are no longer."

Added Chicago resident Chris Mundy: "I don't want this to turn into another Haiti. I don't want people to forget that they need help."

Just as so many people responded to the victims of the tornadoes that struck northern Illinois on the suburban western border earlier this month - so many supplies were donated relief organizers said they now just need monetary donations - it's time to help others in need again.

More than 4,300 people have been killed, another 7,200 estimated to be injured. Tens of thousands have been left homeless. It's devastation that is hard to fathom.

"There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I've had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed," a Nepal government official in the hardest hit district told the Associated Press. In Katmandu, AP reports buildings have been reduced to rubble in part of the city and there were shortages of food, fuel, electricity, medicine and shelter.

All this while search and rescue efforts are still under way.

How can you help? In addition to donating to the American Red Cross at redcross.org, AmeriCares at americares.org and CARE at care.org, several Chicago-area organizations with ties to Nepal are also collecting monetary donations.

These include the Chicagoland Nepal Friendship Society, Chicagoland Tharu Society and Nepali American Center. Information can be found at www.cnfsusa.org.

The memories of a young aspiring photographer helps put the need in focus: "I'm so sad and heartbroken, because it's such a poor country, but so rich with life and love and happiness," said Gaulin.

"Knowing they don't have resources like we do, it's hard to imagine how they're going to rebuild."

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