A 22-year-old North York man is missing in Nepal and his family is desperate for news on his whereabouts.
Casey Blustein’s twin sister Alexa told CTV News Sunday evening that she last spoke to her brother on Friday, the day before a devastating 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal.
The death toll has surged past 3,000 and scores of people remain unaccounted for.
Alexa Blustein said she usually communicates with her brother whenever he has a Wi-Fi connection either on Facebook or WhatsApp. The longest they’ve ever gone without speaking is three days.
“The last few days have been pretty terrible,” she said, fighting back tears. “None of us have slept. We are sitting by our computers and phones waiting for him to call.”
When they last spoke, Casey was in Besisahar which is at the start of the hiking region known as the Annapurna Circuit.
Besisahar is located in the Lamjung district which was the epicentre of the quake.
Blustein said she has spoken with people who have heard from their own families in the region. She said her family has high hopes they too will hear from Casey and that he will be found safe.
"We’ve been told that the region he was in, he’s on flatland. Open flatland. We’re hoping he’s not in any buildings, nothing that crumbled down, no risk of avalanches,” she said during the Skype interview from her Toronto home.
She described her brother as adventurous but resourceful. His stop in Nepal was part of a year-long trip he was taking around the world. He left Toronto in August and Blustein believes her brother is with someone who is also an experienced trekker.
“I’m hoping together, they’ll make a good team and they’ll figure it out,” she said.
The Blustein family has created a Facebook page that has gone viral. They have received hundreds of messages from people who say they have contacts in the region or know people with satellites phones, or who have volunteered to distribute photos of Casey in the region.
To see more photos of the missing man, click here for the Facebook page created by his family.
