Stuck Kiwi tells of quake fears

Martyn Ouseley may be stranded in a remote area of Nepal, but he's doing all he can to help the devastated country.

The charity worker, 42, is about 145km northwest of Kathmandu in Pokhara, an area less frequented by tourists. He arrived two days before the magnitude 7.8 earthquake which ravaged the country on April 25, killing more than 8000 people. A magnitude 7.2 aftershock also rocked the region this week.

His mother, Havelock North's Marion Ouseley, had been in fleeting contact with him during the past couple of weeks. He had hoped to leave Nepal and cross into India, but the border was closed. He said he wasn't satisfied with the New Zealand Government's response to his situation.

"The Government contacted me on Tuesday after my mother rang them. I said I'm in a disaster zone, there's just been a second quake, what are my options? I asked if it were possible to evacuate to India, [the Government official] said she'd get back to me. On Thursday she still hadn't got back to me, so I rang her and she said the border was closed.

"It's been a very, very poor response. It doesn't give you very much confidence in your Government."

He has been staying in a tin-roofed hotel and helping out where he could, loading trucks with supplies and trying to raise money for the relief effort.

"It's second by second - you don't know when the ground is going to roar up again. It's very scary, there's a lot of fear in people. It's like a war zone.

"All these buildings around me, a lot of them are three-storey, and they're poorly built."

Now he plans to travel to Kathmandu and fly to Bangkok.