Discover the heartbreaking and heroic tales of survival from the recent Nepal floods, where communities grapple with immense loss and the daunting task of rebuilding their lives amidst widespread devastation.
Key Points
- Devastating floods in Nepal's Rasuwa district led to a bus carrying pilgrims being swept away, with many missing.
- Survivors like Badri Prasad Devkota recount desperate escapes, clinging to vegetation as floodwaters engulfed their transport.
- Santaman Lama lost his home and possessions despite heeding a flood warning, highlighting the suddenness and scale of the disaster.
- The August 26 floods have resulted in hundreds dead and thousands missing, leaving communities to rebuild amidst immense loss.
- Eyewitness accounts provide a stark glimpse into the catastrophic impact and human cost of the natural calamity.
Badri Prasad Devkota saw a wall of muddy water rushing towards the bus carrying him, his wife and 34 other pilgrims to the Hindu holy site of Gosainkunda in Nepal's Rasuwa district.
"My wife grabbed my hand and pleaded, 'Do not jump.' I told her, 'We will die here,'" Devkota told The Kathmandu Post.
He broke free from her grip and jumped from the moving bus as the Bhotekoshi flood swept across the road at Bhainse in Nuwakot.
The wave knocked him into a roadside drain, but he clung to vegetation on the hillside. From there, he watched the bus disappear beneath the floodwaters.
Eyewitness Accounts Of Devastation
The newspaper reported on Monday that two bodies had been recovered and 28 people remained missing from the group -- one of them is Devkota's wife.
The August 26 floods have left survivors facing the task of rebuilding their lives while thousands of families continue searching for missing loved ones.
With hundreds dead and thousands still missing, accounts from those who escaped offer a glimpse of the suddenness and scale of the disaster.
After the flood subsided, Devkota and his cousin Tularam, who was among six passengers who survived by jumping from the bus, climbed about 20 metres up the hillside and spent two hours on a patch of grass.
They saw people stranded on rooftops and others buried in mud before climbing higher to a village named Hilekharka, where local residents offered them tea and biscuits and helped them obtain first aid.
The two returned to the Bhainse area the following day searching for their families, but found no trace of them before travelling back to their home district, Gorkha.
Surviving The Deluge In Betrawati
At Betrawati, Santaman Lama survived by heeding a warning, but lost almost everything he owned.
Lama told Onlinekhabar news portal on Sunday that he had taken his son and daughter to school on the morning of August 26 and was returning home when a nearby hardware-shop owner warned him that a flood was coming and told him to move uphill.
Warnings of flooding were not unusual in Betrawati, and Lama initially did not take the warning seriously. But he passed the message to his wife and the family moved to higher ground.
The first surge struck soon afterwards.
Lama said the river swept his wife away and that he grabbed her and pushed her towards higher ground before clinging to bushes himself.
From there, he watched the flood sweep away his house. He also managed to pull two neighbours, Ishwarlal Shrestha and Buddhilal Dangol, to safety before losing contact with them, Onlinekhabar reported.
Lama later contacted his children's school and learned that both were safe.
Rebuilding Lives After Catastrophe
But his house, shop and almost everything he owned were gone. "I have nothing to eat or nowhere to stay," Lama said. "That was everything I had."
