As Rasmila Awal walked home from the store on Saturday, the earth began to shake.
A few moments later, she saw the building she lived in collapse.
And inside, under all the debris, Awal knew, were her children -- Soniya, aged 10, and Sonies, only 5 months old.
"I started screaming and asking neighbors for help," she recalled in an interview Thursday.
It looked at first glance as if the children could not have possibly survived.
The scale of the devastation is evident.
Across the street lies a pile of rubble.
Only the occasional soda bottle or piece of clothing sticking out from between some bricks gives any indication that people once lived here.
"I went numb," said Awal, who is 35.
"I didn't hear anything, didn't know if they were alive or not."
Awal's is one of the many stories to emerge after the devastating magnitude-7.8 earthquake hit Nepal Saturday, killing more than 5,500 people and injuring more than twice that number.
Her husband, Sham Krishna Awal, 34, a microbus driver, was working when the quake shook the region.
But Soniya and Sonies were at the family home in Muldhoka, Bhaktapur, east of the capital, Kathmandu.
Sham Awal rushed home and scrabbled frantically through the rubble, searching for his children. Neighbors came to help.
But Rasmila Awal became despondent.
"I had very little hope that they had survived," she said.
"I didn't hear any sound at all."
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