UM grad brings horrors of quake to the world

Thomas Nybo said he has been at the scene of many natural disasters soon after they have struck: tsunamis, earthquakes and typhoons, chronicling them either as a journalist or on behalf of UNICEF.

April 25 was the first time the University of Montana graduate had ever experienced one firsthand.

Nybo, 44, was in a coffee shop in Kathmandu when it struck.

“It was terrifying,” he told the Tribune early Friday in a telephone interview from the airport in Nepal as he waited to fly out and eventually return to his Atlanta home.

He said he expected the tremors to last a few seconds and die down. But this one seemed to never end.

“Things were falling and people were screaming,” he recalled.

He got to his hotel, went into his room (the building next to his hotel had collapsed), grabbed his passport, money and cameras. And then he went to work.

Since then, the world has been able to see the devastation of the magnitude-7.8 quake that killed thousands of people and injured thousands more through the lens of the freelance photographer. Or maybe people have seen the former Choteau Acantha newspaper staffer being interviewed on CNN.

It was his photos of a man being pulled from the rubble that graced the New York Times website. Nybo had helped with rescue efforts. As soon as the man was pulled from the debris, Nybo contacted the Times, where he has worked as a videographer and photographer, and within an hour his photos were online.

He said he was finishing a five-week assignment for UNICEF in Nepal and spends a lot of time in Kathmandu.

While a lot of the older structures in the city collapsed, “What makes Kathmandu Kathmandu will still be there,” he said.

He said he graduated from UM in 1994 with a creative writing degree and then a journalism degree in 1995.

“I started as a print reporter but I like photography,” he said. UM “gave me a good foundation.”

Dennis Swibold, a UM journalism professor, speaks fondly of Nybo, calling him one of the university’s “favorite alums.”

“He’s always popping up in trouble spots around the globe, and it was no surprise to see him first on the scene in Kathmandu,” Swibold wrote in an email, adding Nybo’s photos for the New York Times was “amazing.”

“He’s absolutely fearless, but what he’s really good at is making strong connections with the people in the streets.”

Swibold said Nybo has come back to the journalism school in Missoula several times “and students always love hearing about his global reporting experiences and his exploits as a student.”

Swibold said he remembers when Nybo was a student and did “a great series on how to eat free in Missoula.” And as an intern in Choteau, Nybo did a story on flesh-eating bacteria.

“He was always a strong writer, but he’s made himself into a wonderful still and video photographer too,” Swibold said. “Above all, he has a sense for the where the story is going, and he gets there before the pack.”

Nybo’s plans are to go home to Atlanta for a couple of weeks, then go to the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, back home, then to Sierra Leone and then back to Kathmandu. And the former Helena resident hopes to return to Montana in the fall, his favorite time of year in the state.

Nybo hopes others will return to Nepal as the country relies heavily on tourism.

He encourages people to donate to a vetted charity as soon as possible to help the people of Nepal, as tens of thousands at this point have no shelter or medicine.

“Nepal has a lot to offer and the people are the most loveliest people I have come across,” he said.