Death toll from floods surpasses 1,200
More than 1,200 people have died and over 4,700 others are unaccounted for in Nepal and China as of Thursday (3) after massive flash floods and mudslides struck the border region of the two countries on 26 August.
Nepali authorities say 1,204 people have been confirmed dead and the whereabouts of more than 4,200 people are unknown. China’s State-run media report that 21 people were killed and more than 540 are missing on the Chinese side. The combined death toll from both sides is 1,225.
Military personnel, Police, and others are engaged in search and rescue operations in Nepal. But as roads, power, and communications remain disrupted over wide areas, rescuers are facing an uphill struggle.
Many people who have lost their homes remain evacuated. Authorities face the challenge of finding ways to deliver relief supplies and of maintaining hygiene in shelters to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
Meanwhile, local media outlets reported that Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah had told Parliament on Wednesday that “the time has come for us to strongly present to the international community the disasters we are facing because of climate change”.
Some experts say the flood was caused by a glacier that collapsed due to global warming.
Local media also reported that Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal had said that China, the US, and India, as the top emitters of greenhouse gases, had a historical responsibility to compensate vulnerable nations like Nepal. Accordingly, he indicated that his country would seek compensation.
(Source: NHK)
Nepal renews push for Chinese data, early warnings
Three months before a wall of water, mud, and rock killed hundreds when it hurtled down a Himalayan valley bordering Nepal and China, experts and officials from both countries met in Kathmandu to discuss the risk of such disasters.
At the 27 May meeting in Nepal’s capital, 10 officials from Nepal and about a dozen from China, including the Tibet region where the disaster struck, discussed strengthening cooperation to monitor and respond to floods, weather, and glacier-related hazards, according to an agenda prepared by the Nepali side.
The participants called for joint risk-reduction measures, including inventories of glacial lakes and hazard mapping. But two Nepali officials told Reuters they had not received as much information as they wanted from China on glacier risks and water levels after the meeting. They feared that insufficient data sharing could hamper their ability to anticipate and prepare for major disasters.
“What we actually wanted from them, and still want, is if there are early movements of glaciers and early movements around that area, we would want to know a bit early,” said Sauhardra Joshi, a hydrologist at Nepal’s Flood Forecasting Division, who was at the May meeting.
No officials or experts have blamed either side for the natural disaster, which will cost an estimated 10th of Nepal’s annual economic output to recover from. Nepali officials say the priority is to deepen cooperation with China.
China’s Foreign Ministry said that the two sides had maintained “sound cooperation in the fields of meteorology, water resources, and disaster prevention and mitigation”.
“China will continue to strongly support Nepal’s disaster relief efforts, strengthen cooperation in disaster prevention and mitigation, and safeguard the common interests of the two peoples,” the ministry told Reuters.
(Source: Reuters)
Hopes of finding survivors dim
Rescue teams raced on Wednesday (2) to reach dozens of workers believed to be trapped inside hydropower tunnels in Nepal’s mountains, offering one of the last hopes of finding survivors a week after a Himalayan flood killed more than 1,200 people.
Rescue efforts have increasingly centred on hydroelectric project tunnels where authorities believe workers may have survived after being cut off by floodwaters and debris.
Some tunnels contain chambers with air supplies, and rescuers were trying to reach about 900 missing workers.
“We are very confident that there is life in there because there is food and water in the building; that was likely built for communication purposes and as a resting place,” Amshu Kiran Shahi, a Board member of the Nepal Electricity Authority, told Reuters.
The chance of finding survivors elsewhere was fading, authorities said, but there was no let-up in rescue operations as teams scoured the mountainside along the border with China where floods tore through towns and valleys.
“The hope of finding survivors is decreasing,” Phanindra Paudel, a senior official at Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Center (NEOC), said. “We pray and are hopeful. Hope is hope!”
Prime Minister Balendra Shah told Parliament the search would continue. “Our priority remains clear: to continue our search and rescue operations, find those who are still missing, and continue supporting everyone affected,” he said.
Major rescue operations were underway or planned at tunnels at four projects, and two of them with a total of nearly 100 people missing offered the strongest hopes of finding survivors because of the presence of air inside, Shahi said.
At Trishuli 3A, one of the two projects, officials believed there was a dry space inside and expected oxygen to be flowing through the tunnel, with pipes also being used to push oxygen inside, Shahi said.
Specialised rescue teams from India, China, and the US were involved in the tunnel rescue attempts.
Across the border in Tibet, China’s official toll increased, with at least 21 dead and 541 missing.
The update came after Beijing fully reopened the road leading to the Gyirong border crossing, which was obliterated by the giant wall of water and debris that crashed through the area, allowing heavy machinery to reach the core disaster zone for the first time.
Chinese State broadcaster CCTV showed excavators, rescue teams, search dogs, and life-detection equipment being deployed in a narrow mountain gorge where rain, unstable cliffs, and a fast-flowing river have hampered operations.
Rescuers are focusing on structures including the inspection building, parking lots, and dormitories in the now flattened area as they conduct a ‘deep search’ for survivors, local newspaper Tibet Daily reported on Wednesday, citing a media briefing by the Government.
Beijing will send more DNA identification experts and emergency supplies including temporary Bailey bridges, mortuary refrigerators, and communications equipment to Nepal to help with the relief efforts, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Residents in Nepal’s affected areas walked around the remains of what were once bustling villages and towns, trying to salvage whatever they could of their belongings.
“My husband and I were able to escape safely. But we could not pick up anything,” said Shanta Sunar, 45, a shopkeeper and survivor from Nuwakot. “We have lost whatever we had. But we are lucky nothing happened to us.”
(Source: CBC)
Families hold symbolic funerals in Nepal
Some families in Nuwakot, one of Nepal’s worst-affected districts, have held symbolic funerals for relatives still missing, hoping to free their souls after they were presumed dead.
In Hindu tradition, cremation is an important final rite, and for some families, performing the ceremony even without the bodies of their loved ones provides a sense of spiritual release.
Mukunda Rijal said that his cousins and their daughters had not been found, prompting the family to perform a symbolic funeral for them.
Along the banks of the Trishuli River, a priest placed straw effigies representing the missing family members and covered them with small piles of wood before setting them alight. The symbolic funeral pyres were surrounded by offerings to Hindu deities as relatives gathered to perform the final rites.
Authorities in Nepal have also been burying recovered bodies in temporary graves until they can be identified. They are preserving DNA samples, photographing distinguishing facial features, and recording other identifying details to help match the remains with missing people and eventually return them to their families.
(Source: Chicago Tribune)
The Principal who evacuated 900 students
Rajendra Dawadi was inside his classroom when a colleague rushed in with a warning: floodwaters were racing through Nepal’s Trishuli valley, tearing apart homes, bridges, and entire villages.
Then a teacher received another warning by phone. Moments later, a parent arrived to take her child home. The danger had not yet been confirmed, but Dawadi, the Principal, had little time to act. He rang the school bell and ordered his students and staff out of the building and towards higher ground.
“I immediately decided to stop school” and get the children out, he told AP.
As he followed them to a nearby hill, the floodwaters rose behind him. From the safety of the hillside, he turned to watch the school where he had once been a student – and where he had spent years teaching – disappear beneath a torrent of water, mud, boulders, and debris. Two staff members could not make it and remain missing.
Dawadi’s decision to evacuate the school saved at least 900 students from the devastating flash floods in Nepal, unleashed after a glacial collapse in the Himalayas.
His quick thinking and swift response during the disaster have been hailed as an act of heroism. When he returned to the site of the school days later, parents embraced him as they thanked him for saving their children. “Their parents hugged me, they cried with me,” he said. “They were emotional.”
Student Suvina Tamang, 14, said that the building had been swept away shortly after the students had been evacuated. “I will thank him when I see him [for saving my life],” she said.
(Source: AP)
Mother reunited with 8-year-old survivor
Zoyal Ghale, who ran into a forest and climbed trees to escape Nepal’s deadly floods, was reunited with his mother after she had begun to fear he and his brother had both perished in their school.
A day earlier, eight-year-old Ghale had been airlifted alone from the devastated northern district of Rasuwa with a broken leg and cuts on his face, while his mother, Matti Maya Tamang, 28, moved from one shelter and collection point to another looking for her two missing children.
“At the fourth place too, my children’s names were not on the list, and they were not there,” Tamang told Reuters. “I had come to accept that both my children were no more. All I could do was weep. I couldn’t hold myself together at all.
After more unsuccessful searching, Tamang obtained the telephone number of Reuters journalist Sahana Bajracharya, who had met Ghale several hours earlier at a small hospital in the neighbouring Nuwakot District.
Bajracharya and a Reuters team had gone to the hospital after hearing about a young boy who had been taken there and the authorities did not know where his family was. After speaking to Ghale before he was airlifted for more treatment, Bajracharya said he had agreed to be filmed in the hope of finding his family.
Bajracharya left her number at the hospital and Tamang called her some hours later. When Bajracharya told her that Ghale was alive and had been transferred to Kathmandu, Tamang said she could barely believe it. She had already found her younger son alive as well.
When Reuters encountered Ghale at the 15-bed Chakra Dev Hospital in Nuwakot, nobody there appeared to know where his family was. His right leg was broken and his face was scratched and bruised. In his left hand, however, he tightly clutched two 10-rupee notes. Police officers who had rescued him had given him the money to persuade him to go to hospital with them.
He said he had been studying at school when the flood struck. Suddenly, “it was so, so black,” he recalled. He said he had run from the school into the forest with a friend and climbed into the trees to escape. Asked whether he had been frightened, he shook his head. “No.”
After days of frantic searching, his mother finally stood quietly beside his bed. Ghale’s father, a construction labourer in Japan, was also on his way, Tamang said.
The recent floods have transformed life in Rasuwa. But for Tamang, at least a degree of normality had already returned. “Oh, he is always a mischievous kid,” Tamang said. “This is not his first broken bone.”
(Source: Reuters)