SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Three days after a series of cataclysmic flash floods and landslides decimated villages on the Tibet-Nepal border, rescue and recovery efforts continue.
The number of Australians missing has been revised up to 41, as dozens of families continue the agonising wait for details about their loved ones.
Here’s what else we know at this stage:
- The death toll has risen to 633 and at least 2984 people are reported missing across the disaster zones in Nepal and China, including 517 tourists in Nepal.
- One Australian who had been missing, Cara Severino, made contact with her parents yesterday. The 26-year-old said she was stranded along the Langtang Trek, and faced a lengthy hike to reach Kathmandu on foot.
- Search and rescue efforts are continuing at several locations, including the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Nepal’s Rasuwa district and the severely damaged Gyirong border crossing on the Chinese side.
- A total of 129 foreign nationals have been rescued in Nepal since Wednesday, according to an update from Nepal’s disaster management agency on Saturday afternoon.
- The threat of a lake bursting near the China-Nepal border has decreased, Chinese authorities said on Saturday. The lake, which was formed after a glacier collapsed, appeared to have shrunk, the authorities said.
Search and rescue efforts continued at several locations in Nepal and China’s Tibet, including the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Nepal’s Rasuwa district and the severely damaged Gyirong border crossing on the Chinese side.
Nepali Army spokesperson Brigadier General Raja Ram Basnet said rescue efforts would continue at the hydropower construction site, where authorities believe more than 100 people are trapped in a tunnel filled with thick mud.
Basnet said rescuers had used baskets and ropes to reach some people, but the operation remained difficult because a 1.5-metre thick layer of mud and the limited number of places where helicopters could land.
He said rescue teams had also been forced to relocate temporarily when authorities issued warnings about possible further flooding, concerns which have since lessened.
AP
As people were still evacuating from Trishuli, some village residents were returning to see what could be salvaged from their decimated homes.
One boy walked out of the village carrying muddy sandals from his house. Another woman, Shoba Shretha, returned to find her dog, Sweetie, who she was forced to leave behind when the floods came.
Shretha sat on the ground petting her and feeding her water from a bottle.
At some point, relief co-ordinators cleared villagers, press and volunteers from the entrance to Trishuli, as excavation equipment drove into the flooded village, continuing to dig.
AP
Our South-East Asia correspondent Zach Hope has just filed a dispatch from the Nepalese hospital where many of the rescued survivors are being treated.
“Over my shoulder is a list, people have been crowding around it all day. People are hoping to find their loved ones’ names on it, because it means they’re still alive.”
China’s state broadcaster CCTV said today its death toll from the flash flooding stood at seven, with 554 missing.
Chinese search and rescue teams conducted “detailed surveys and grid-like searches of key areas” at Gyirong Port, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Footage of the area being wiped out in the deluge has circulated widely online.
The state outlet posted footage on X that showed personnel in hard hats and boots scouring a landscape of gray mud and jagged rocks, calling out for possible survivors, while another clip showed drones being deployed to deliver supplies for the rescuers.
In Nuwakot, one of the Nepali districts devastated by the floods, helicopters resumed operations before noon today (Nepal time).
Some helicopters were loaded with boxes and bags of aid, including clothes, instant noodles, crackers and rice. Others returned from the flood-hit areas carrying survivors.
An elderly man was carefully helped off one helicopter, while a soldier carried an elderly woman on his back to a medical tent. There, medics checked her blood pressure, breathing and heartbeat, as well as her teeth and gums.
Most of those evacuated arrived with nothing except the clothes they were wearing and, in some cases, a small plastic bag.
Anjana Raja realised something was wrong when she turned her head and saw four people were missing from the front of her tour bus.
The San Francisco bay-area local was on a pilgrimage to Rasuma with her husband on Wednesday, when suddenly the driver, the tour guide and two helpers had all disappeared from the coach.
“They jumped out of the bus and ran,” she told CBS. “Within five seconds, I saw a 60-70-foot high brown [wave] coming our way.”
“It looked like a tsunami, but dark … it looked like fire,” said her husband Pattabiraman Venkatesan.
The last update Karan Bhardwaj’s family received from the Royal Australian Air Force member’s Nepal trip was from a group photo he sent of the Kailash Journey tour group.
In it, Bhardwaj is pictured beaming, with his hands wrapped around his Brisbane friends Arpan Kothari, 40, and Bhavin Raval, 41.
The trio have not been heard from since and are among six Australians currently missing from the Kailash Journeys tour group.
The group included eight Americans, seven Britons, six Australians, one New Zealander, two Canadians and one South African and one Malaysian, Sujan Wasti, head of Kailash Journeys’ Nepal operations, said.
Nepal needs $US4 billion to $5 billion ($5 to 7 billion) for rebuilding after the devastating flood that struck its border areas this week, Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle says.
“This is just an estimate. Loss and damage is being assessed,” he said.
That estimate is roughly equivalent to one ninth of Nepal’s annual gross domestic product.
So far, world governments and non-government organisations have committed more than $170 million to Nepal in humanitarian assistance, including Australia, which has committed $5 million and some personnel with technical expertise.
Sydneysider Bharat Mangwani was confirmed missing by his friend Harsh Maheshwari.
Mangwani was last heard from just before the floods, where he was in good spirits having completed his pilgrimage.
He was also travelling as part of the S3 group with Trekkers Societies. He was last seen at the Gyirong Immigration Facility in Tibet, and was on his way to Kathmandu, and then to Delhi.
Mangwani, an engineer based in Kellyville, has two children, a nine-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter, and his wife is currently in Nepal, searching for him.
Maheshwari said his friend’s family are desperate to reach him and have published information on social media, including his name and contact details for his family.
