Survivors of Deadly Nepal Flood Recall Its Devastating Force
New York Times · LC · trust 36/100
Survivors described the terrifying speed and power of the “boulders, sand and thick sludge” that killed hundreds and wiped out villages on the border between Nepal and Tibet.
Listen · 2:51 min Share full article Smriti Ojha, left, and Rajan Khatri, right, who survived Wednesday’s floods in Nepal, at a hospital in Kathmandu on Thursday. Binod Ghimire for The New York Times By Binod Ghimire
Reporting from a hospital treating survivors in Kathmandu, Nepal
But for the survivors, it is the force of the deluge that haunts them. One minute, their lives were routine. The next, the world turned upside down.
Rajan Khatri, 41, a police officer posted at Syabrubesi, one of the riverside villages worst affected by the floods, said he had received a call around 9:10 a.m. local time from a friend warning him that a massive flash flood was heading downstream.
He and his colleagues had no time to react. As soon as he hung up, high waves swept through the police station.
The water flung him out of the building, and he lost consciousness.
“One of my senior officers and I were together when the wave struck. I was thrown out, but he was unlucky and was buried or swept away,” he said from a hospital bed in Kathmandu.
“I cannot explain how big the waves were. They engulfed several-meters-high buildings in a fraction of seconds,” he said. “It wasn’t just water. It was a combination of boulders, sand and thick sludge.”
Of the seven people who had been working at his police station, Mr. Khatri is one of three to have been found alive. He said he was worried about whether the other four had survived.
After regaining consciousness, he looked around and saw nothing but debris. He said at least 100 houses had been swept away, along with the office of a hydropower project, schools and other government facilities.
Mr. Khatri waited amid the debris until his rescue on Thursday morning. He had sustained chest injuries from the force of the floodwaters.
Smriti Ojha, 17, was getting ready for school in Trishuli, in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, when she felt a tremor.
Initially, she thought it was an earthquake — not unlike the one in 2015 that destroyed her family’s home. She rushed out of the rented house where she lives with her friends. Just as she came out, she saw enormous waves.
“Everyone in the house got out before it was too late, but we couldn’t save anything,” she said from her hospital bed, where she was receiving treatment for a cut on her right foot. Her immediate family, which lives more than five miles from the destruction, is safe, but four of her relatives are missing.
“It was terror,” she said. “I cannot believe everything was swept away before my eyes.”
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