Nepal flood survivors return to ruins, salvage memories and mementos
Days after a wall of water and debris tore through Nepal, survivors are returning to villages reduced to mud and debris, searching for belongings, documents and fragments of lives swept away in minutes.
Shanti Lamichhane sat on a fruit crate in the dirt where her village once stood, staring at what remained of her home in Dhunge, a settlement once home to roughly 150 families. It now lies as a swampy expanse with a rotting stench, one of dozens of settlements obliterated by the Himalayan floods.
"I want to retrieve a few things, but it is not just about that," she told AFP. "All my memories are there too."
The disaster struck Wednesday morning on the China-Nepal border. The U.S. Geological Survey said a glacial collapse sent an icy torrent downstream, carrying boulders with sheer force and cutting a swathe through Nepal from north to south.
As of Sunday morning, figures from Nepal and China put the total number of missing close to 3,000, with 691 bodies recovered. Many survivors fled without taking anything with them. Now they are returning to salvage whatever might remain—or simply to see what became of what they once called home.
Hari Prasad Rimal returned to his home in Devighat, hoping to recover treasured belongings, including jewellery and cash. He brought back a photograph of his daughter.
"It was pasted on a chest that was floating," said the 44-year-old. "There was nothing else I could retrieve, but that photo also means a lot."
Rimal's warehouse business, a few kilometres upstream, remained inaccessible. Drone images taken by a volunteer showed only mud and debris where it had stood. "It is gone, but I should not complain perhaps," he said. "At least, everyone in my family survived."
In Dhunge, Navraj Upretti waded through knee-high sludge towards his home, flanked by two rescuers carrying shovels. "I have some important documents I really need," he said.
After an hour-long search, documents did emerge from beneath the silt—but they belonged to a neighbour and were duly returned. Upretti, 40, who ran a restaurant in the area, said he had less than a minute to escape when the floods struck. "The house was inundated; I had managed to get barely 100 metres away," he said. The restaurant was completely destroyed.
Santosh Adhikari was in Kathmandu when the deluge swept away his home in Dhunge. He returned three days later to find the house buried. "There was nothing," he said.
Workers clearing silt from the flood-struck region say they occasionally come across personal belongings, including gold jewellery. "But the debris is still knee-high and there is a stench in many places," said Ayushman Kuinkel, a rescuer from the Nepal Scouts youth group. "One knows that there are also likely bodies under it."
