As he watched the video of people sifting through the rubble of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in his native Nepal, Abi Sharma felt a visceral reaction to what he saw.

“My body is trembling,” he said. “I mean, I’m a Nepali. My hopes and aspirations and my identity is attached with these symbols, right? A symbol has very strong meaning. So seeing they’re completely destroyed, a part of my identity is also destroyed.”

Abi Sharma and Pradeep Sharma are just two of the more than 1,000 Nepalese residents of British Columbia for whom the hours since a massive earthquake struck their home country have been extremely difficult.

“I’ve not slept through the night,” Abi Sharma said.

“It’s really frustrating,” said Pradeep Sharma of the bits and pieces of information they’ve received since the quake. “You feel like crying from your heart.”

The pair operates Cafe Kathmandu on Commercial Drive. Though they share the same last name, any blood relation between them is distant. In this moment of crisis, however, their connection as fellow Nepalis is especially strong.

Abi Sharma said he feels “survivor’s guilt,” because he lives in Canada and his friends and family remain in a country that was politically and economically unstable before the earthquake.

“I’m in a safe place, and then my own loved ones are in harm’s way all the time, constantly, this just being one addition to that fear,” he said.

For Pradeep Sharma, though he’s been able to contact his mother and father, and has learned through them that his sister and brother are still alive, the inability to be there to help is painful.

“You want to see them,” he said. “You want to be there as quickly as possible, but that’s just an imagination. It’s not something practical.”

Vancouver’s Nepalese community will be collecting funds to help with the recovery from the quake, Abi Sharma said, though he wasn’t aware of organized efforts to do so yet.

He said individual members of the community all over Canada have already begun sending money to friends and family, organizing their efforts through social media.

“Collectively we will will definitely be doing something,” he said. “We as a diaspora are used to that. We all send money to support our families and loved ones back home.”

Nearly 1,400 people have been confirmed dead since the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck shortly before noon local time on Saturday.

The Canadian Red Cross is currently accepting donations for its relief efforts in the region.