A pair of friends with ties to Clark County were volunteering in Kathmandu, Nepal, when the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck.
Hockinson High School graduates Dani Lueck and Jade Budden, both 24, went to Kathmandu to work with Volunteers Initiative Nepal. They have been in the country since the end of March, teaching English to victims of sex-trafficking.
They were in a cafe at a temple Saturday when the ground shook violently. Lueck’s Snapchat application on her cellphone was open at the time, capturing video of the pair scrambling under a table for safety. Both of them made it through the quake and the aftershocks unscathed.
In the earthquake’s aftermath, Lueck and Budden shifted gears and are raising disaster relief funds for the Sindhupalchok District, just outside of Kathmandu, which has the highest reported death toll. In the first 12 hours they raised over $1,000 — donations from friends and family who’ve been following their journey online. Lueck and Budden announced online that they are staying until Sunday in Kathmandu, where they’re helping with media coverage and collecting supplies to send to a village where all of the buildings were leveled.
