Posted on 04/27/2015 2:34:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It’s very likely that Scott Holder of Santa Rosa would have been among the 17 people killed in Nepal after an earthquake unleashed an avalanche on Mount Everest.
But he had a massive cold.
ow to Help Victims of the Nepal Earthquake And instead of climbing up the Earth’s highest mountain, the 49-year-old financial adviser and mountaineer had headed back to below camp before big catastrophe on Saturday.
“At the end of the day, God gave me a cold for a reason,” Holder, 49, told NBC Bay Area by phone from the capital city of Kathmandu near Mount Everest.
And he described what it was like to feel a 42-second earthquake from down below the mountain. “It was traumatic,” he said. “No one knows how to act in an earthquake, but the locals were panicked. It was pandemonium.”
At least 17 climbers and guides died on the mountain from the avalanches triggered by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake northwest of Nepal’s capital. On Monday, the death toll for the country had risen to about 4,000, and four American were confirmed dead, all of them in the area of Mount Everest.
One of those Americans was Google X executive Dan Fredinburg, who was on the Google Adventure Team, which mapped exotic locations for the Silicon Valley company.
Through coughs and sniffles, Holder said that his immediate plans are to gather some like-minded souls and help the Red Cross in Nepal on Tuesday. Then, sometime later this week, he wants to hop on a plane and head back to the Bay Area to see his wife of 24 years and his two daughters, 17 and 19.
“I just want to hug my wife and hug my kids,” he said.
After this disaster, I wonder if anyone will summit this year?
I doubt it, the infrastructure is pretty torn up. Plus, the Sherpas need to go home to see if they have homes left.
... and then there’s the decency factor.
my idea of roughing it is a hotel room without a Jacuzzi
So, everyone that died wasn’t important enough to get a cold?
I have never been on Everest, but understand that ladders and ropes must be installed and maintained every year over parts of the ascent. One wonders if that infrastructure has been wiped out, or merely covered in meters of snow and ice. Either way, it won’t be repaired within this climbing season.
Exactly. I hate these statements. God “saved” me by giving me a cold but he had no problem dropping buildings and other wise slaughtering 2500 plus people. Give me a break.
“So, everyone that died wasn’t important enough to get a cold?”
It doesn’t matter how important you are - just how much you’ve sinned. /s
I was just having this conversation with my daughter. The entire world is fallen, and death happens - mostly due to “natural causes” without God planning anything by it.
Although I’m not sure how it was supposed to work without dieing with gravity around. (Falling to one’s death, avalanches, stuff bonking you on your head, etc.)
It might have been more appropriate for him to simply Thank God rather than to layout the scenario as his having been saved by God “giving” him a cold.
It does seem insensitive.
You hate them because you hate God? Especially a God so personal that He has a separate dedicated path for each person?
You sound like God came across a bunch of innocent people and messed them up somehow.
Well for starters nobody’s innocent.
God singles everybody out for something.
On the other hand, once they have made repairs and cleaned up the Nepalis in that industry will want to go back to work making money.
I understand it’s a big economic input. But, I’ve also heard there’s a very short season for going to the summit, because the weather changes. So... there’s a disaster, and a closing weather window.
Next year, I’m sure they’ll be back, no matter what.
Yes, the monsoon arrives in early June and closes the climbing season.
Monsoon at lower altitudes means blizzards higher up, right?
Some protective acts of God are nothing to sneeze at.
So - God gave him a cold, but all those who died were passed over for some reason? Did he pray for God’s intervention - to avoid the climb?
Dude - random crap happens in the universe, and God very rarely intervenes with the natural flow of the physical world - since he set it in motion.
Everything does not happen for a reason - that is part of free will and making prudent choices. When people die/survive tragic events God did not necessarily pick and choose the winners and losers.
(See Bruce Almighty, the movie has a fairly good take on this.)
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