Nepal flood survivors recount losing families to devastating torrents

The flood came without warning on Wednesday, moving with such force that seismologists initially recorded it as an earthquake. When it hit the villages along Nepal's border with Tibet, it moved faster than anyone could run. At least 469 people died. Several hundred more are still missing. Entire families vanished into the mud.

Kalpana Malla watched it happen. She was in Nuwakot district when the water came, and she saw her father, mother, sister, and her sister's children swept away in front of her. She and her son, Sugam, made it to the roof of a nearby house and clung there as the torrent passed beneath them. Later, when she tried to explain how they survived while everyone else around them didn't, she couldn't find the words. "There was no chance at all," she told the BBC. "This flood took everything, but my son and I climbed the rooftop of a house and survived but couldn't explain how." Sugam remembered pulling his mother's hand, gripping hard enough to keep her from being pulled away. He had given his phone to his sister so they could stay in touch. The phone stopped ringing.

The destruction extended beyond the loss of life. Goma Pandit lost her buffaloes and cattle, the animals that represented her livelihood. Her farmland disappeared. Ten sacks of mustard seeds, tons of corn and rice paddy—the crops she had grown and stored—were gone. She stood in the aftermath with nothing left to show for the work of months.

By Thursday, rescuers were moving through the thick mud and debris, and Nepalese authorities were rushing aid and relief supplies to the affected areas. But the work of finding people had barely begun. At Kathmandu's TU Teaching Hospital, families gathered to wait for news. Ram Khumari Shrestha held up her phone and showed a photo of her husband. He had left for Rasuwa for his driving job and had texted her until 8 p.m. the night before. When she tried to call him the next morning, the phone was off. Mani Shrestha Bishwa was also there, waiting to hear from his younger brother, his cousin, his uncle, and a friend. He had last spoken to them at 8:30 in the morning.

Sonam Dorjee, a trekking guide, had left his home village of Rasiwa Syafru at 8 a.m. on Wednesday. An hour later, as he was driving toward Kathmandu, he heard the sound of the flood rushing into the place he had just left. "It sounded like an earthquake," he said. His house had collapsed—he had seen a photo. His sister, Dechen Tamang, was missing, along with her husband and several other family members. Dorjee described the flood as sudden and devastating, the kind of disaster that gives no time to think, no moment to prepare. "Many survivors are now left without homes and they need emergency rescue and evacuation, as well as food, temporary accommodation and medical support," he said. He was praying his sister would be found alive. "There is a 10% chance, we hope," he said, holding onto the smallest possibility.

The scale of what happened is still becoming clear. Hundreds remain missing. Hundreds more are now homeless, without crops, without livestock, without the things that sustained them. The work of finding the missing continues, and the work of rebuilding—for those who survive—has only just begun.