Tamara McLeod and Nepal

recovery efforts: The U.N. says the quake affected 8.1 million people — more than a quarter of Nepal 28 million people, according to Winnipeg Free Press. TORONTO - Amid the destruction and recovery efforts in Nepal, four Canadians are taking solace in each other company after being evacuated from the earthquake-stricken country to India. The true extent of the damage from the April 25 earthquake is still unknown as reports keep filtering in from remote areas, some of which remain entirely cut off. Tamara McLeod, 24, from Calgary, was in the small village of Briddim in the Langtang region of the Himalayas, to the north of the Kathmandu Valley, when the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck last Saturday. "We were sitting in the room when the earthquake began and the stone, we were in a stone house, started falling from the roof and we had to escape the building. But her ordeal wasn't over, as McLeod was then forced to walk seven hours on a badly damaged road to an area where she could take a bus to the capital city of Kathmandu. "The road was covered in debris and blocks where the mountain had fallen," she said. "We passed several villages that were totally destroyed by the earthquake ... it was a really devastating experience." After making it to Kathmandu, McLeod boarded a military flight to New Delhi, organized by the Canadian Armed Forces. We were on the second floor and the walls were caving in and the roof was collapsing," she told The Canadian Press in a phone interview from New Delhi. "We all started running towards the rice fields and that where we spent the hours after the earthquake when we were experiencing all of the aftershocks and the tremors." McLeod said that most of the houses in the village were destroyed, making them "unlivable and unsafe" to go near during the aftershocks that persisted for five days after the initial quake. "The village set up kind of a temporary camp in the garden in the field below the village, so everyone was in tents," she said. "I was sleeping in a shelter where a cow normally sleeps under, we just put a tarp over that and slept on the ground there." McLeod said she remained there for four days until a helicopter evacuated her and a few others to the nearby town of Dhunche. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.