A NETWORK outage at Rathdowney has left the family of Scenic Rim mountaineer Innes Larkin unable to make direct contact with him after a major earthquake in Nepal, where he is on a hiking expedition.
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Mr Larkin's wife Tracey received word his group was confirmed safe on Monday morning but she was yet to make direct contact with him because she has been cut off from the Telstra network since Thursday.
The magnitude-7.8 earthquake, described as Nepal's worst in 80 years, struck near the capital of Kathmandu on Saturday and at the time of publishing the death toll was reported to have reached 2500.
The first Ms Larkin, who runs Mt Barney Lodge with Mr Larkin, heard about the quake was a concerned phone call from her husband's sister on Saturday night, asking if she had heard the news.
"I'd had no inkling of what was happening and she just said 'have you heard the news' so my stomach lurched because that's always a precursor to potentially bad news," she said.
The couple had arranged to keep in touch through private messages on Facebook before Mr Larkin, 43, set out from Australia on April 14.
But when disaster struck in Nepal their system of communication was cut off because of the outage at Rathdowney.
Ms Larkin said, while she and her family had been in good spirits about Mr Larkin's well-being, it was frustrating to be cut off from him.
"There's been no coverage whatsoever and I've been in an immediate blackout... I can't actually get any messages so he could have well communicated with me but I have to drive into Boonah to get that reception," she said.
"I'm confident that he's okay but it's just trying to get that contact so I can notify the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that I personally have spoken to him because until there's that direct person to person contact it's still not definite."
She said having no Internet access meant her family had limited information about the situation in Nepal but they were just thankful to know Mr Larkin was okay.
"I couldn't even make sense of the information that I had because my first reaction would be to Google a map of Kathmandu or Nepal and all I had was a high school Atlas with very limited information," she said.
"No news is good news is what I kept saying to the kids - it's good to know he's safe and both of the kids also feel quite relieved - they're used to their dad's expeditions."
A Telstra spokesman said a faulty piece of transmission was to blame.
"We are aware of an issue affecting 3G coverage in Rathdowney, which is the result of a faulty piece of transmission equipment at the local exchange," he said.
"We are working to get a technician to the site to replace the faulty hardware.
"We apologise to the residents of Rathdowney and assure them we are working as quickly as possible to restore 3G coverage to the area."
Source: Beaudesert Times