KATHMANDU: Five-year-old Ishara Tamang lies in a hospital bed in Kathmandu, injured and separated from her family, after surviving the flash floods that devastated Rasuwa district on the Nepal-Tibet border.
She was rescued from the floodwaters in Khalte, a village in Rasuwa, after being trapped in a net, the Onlinekhabar news portal reported. Ishara told hospital staff: “Mother was swept away. I jumped and moved forward, then got trapped in the net.”
The August 26 floods - which travelled downstream through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river system - have left a trail of destruction across northern and central Nepal, with the death toll crossing 700 on Sunday, while around 2,500 people are still missing.
Families, on Sunday, crowded hospitals searching for missing relatives as rescuers continued digging through mud and debris amid intermittent rainfall and renewed concerns over rising river levels.
Ishara was with her mother when the flood struck. The child was swept away, tried to move forward and became trapped in a net before rescuers found her and brought her to safety.
She was not accompanied by a family member at the hospital. When she regained consciousness, she was able to tell medical staff her name and said her father was in Kathmandu. Her mother’s whereabouts remained unknown, the report said.
In another rescue operation at the Timure border town, an Armed Police Force team searching the wreckage of a collapsed security post heard a child's cries.
The Kathmandu Post newspaper reported that the rescuers dug through the debris and pulled out a six-year-old girl alive.
The team had initially been unable to see anyone beneath the collapsed structure, but heard the child's crying while searching the site, said the report quoting a senior security official.
The girl was taken to the border outpost in Timure, but bad weather prevented her immediate evacuation to a hospital, the newspaper reported, without sharing her identity.
At Timure, businessman Nischal Tripathi escaped the flood by running from a building as water and mud surged through the settlement.
According to Onlinekhabar, Tripathi had been in Timure for about 20 days on business and was on the fifth floor of a building when he felt it shake. He ran downstairs and jumped from around the second floor before reaching the mountainside.
Tripathi and others then fled into the forest. They spent the night on noodles and biscuits before moving to a goat shed, where around 150 to 200 people gathered along with Nepali Army personnel, Onlinekhabar reported.
Tripathi told the news portal that his brother, five or six members of his team and seven truck drivers remained out of contact. “Only one or two houses appear to have survived,” he said, describing the destruction.
For Rekha Devi Gosain of Trishuli Bazaar, surviving the flood has meant confronting the loss of her home, livelihood and access to essential medicines.
The Kathmandu Post reported that the flood swept away Gosain’s home and four shops. Her vehicle, motorcycle and other belongings were also lost, and she was unable to save medicines she takes for diabetes, high blood pressure and thyroid disease.
Gosain was among people staying in the area around Trishuli Hospital after the disaster, according to the newspaper.
Her son Raghubir told the newspaper that she had gone three days without her regular medicines because the hospital did not have them.
The survivors' stories are unfolding alongside a much larger search for those who remain missing. Over the last few days, families have gathered at hospitals with photographs and other information about missing relatives, checking lists and waiting for news of those who may have survived.
For those pulled from the rubble, swept towards hillsides or stranded overnight in forests, surviving the flood was only the first part of the ordeal. For thousands of families still searching, the wait for news continues.