The death toll from a devastating April 25 earthquake grew Monday when a 7.3 magnitude aftershock rocked an already reeling Nepal.

    According to government reports, more than 8,000 people are dead with that number expected to climb in the coming days and months.

    To curb an ever-increasing death toll, relief workers are now racing against the arrival of the country’s monsoon season. Mid-May marks the beginning of a rainy season that will now descend on people with no houses.  

    “The biggest thing to worry about now in the mountains are mudslides and landslides,” said Fahim Rahim, a local doctor who recently returned from an aid trip to the country. “In the cities it is cholera.”

    Rahim and the JRM Foundation for Humanity are now coordinating evacuation and shelter set-up efforts, communicating through Facebook and working through volunteers on the ground.

    Some of these local contacts are the friends and family members of Nepalese students at Idaho State University.

    Sekhar Dahal, an Idaho State University student who grew up in Nepal, is thinking of home, the terraced farming villages that are dug precariously out of mountainsides and the impending rainy season there.

    “In a regular season we lose lives during monsoon season,” Dahal said. “Last monsoon season I heard about a place where this whole hill fell down.”

    The next step in the relief effort, Rahim says, is to evacuate rural villages and set up clean, sanitary shelters in the bigger cities.

    Monsoon season generally begins around mid-May, Dahal said. Until October, rain is expected most days. This year, however, it will fall on a country surviving amid crumbled roofs.

    “I talked to my parents this morning and they say it is already raining there,” said Aayush Palikhel, another ISU student from Nepal.

    Both Palikhel and Dahal have heard from their families and say that they are safe and have shelter.