Nepali residents in the UAE have spoken of neighbours and friends swept away in the devastating floods that have left thousands of people missing.
The Nepali community told of the mammoth task facing rescue teams clearing the bodies of people crushed inside buildings and smothered under mud after the Rasuwa River swept through towns and washed away houses.
Manoj Marahatta, a Nepali entrepreneur, was grief-stricken on learning that more than 30 neighbours were missing after the bus they had set out on for a pilgrimage was caught up in the flood.
“Five people jumped out of the bus, but 32 people are missing. These are my neighbours and they have not returned, there is no trace of them,” said Mr Marahatta about his hometown, Gurkha, where a hospital, a bank and houses were washed away in low-lying areas.
“I know the bus driver, I know the people in the bus; they are from my village. They left in the morning for a pilgrimage in the same direction that the flood came in from. No calls are going through, so everyone is panicking. This is the start of a holy festive season so a lot of people had set out on pilgrimages.”
Prime Minister Balendra Shah has said the country is facing an “unimaginable and heartbreaking” disaster with more than 900 bodies recovered and more than 4,200 people missing. More than 500 foreign nationals are among the missing, according to the country’s disaster authority.
Last week, The National reported that the UAE had provided a $10 million humanitarian aid package to Nepal to support flood relief efforts.
On Sunday, the UAE sent an aid plane carrying 83 tonnes of food and shelter supplies to Nepal, as part of the support package.
No roads, just mud
A massive rock-and-ice avalanche triggered flash floods in the mountain valleys of the Rasuwa and Dhadhing districts as the heaving river took lives and caused immense destruction.
“There are no roads, just mud. A bridge in my town in Dhading district is gone. On the lower level, the whole city is washed away,” said Mr Marahatta, who runs a food trading company in Dubai. He has spoken to his family who live on the upper hillside and people who are part of the district rescue teams.
“All the houses below the hill are full of mud, and people are buried inside the mud,” Mr Marahatta said. “The rescue team leaders say they are finding people who tried to climb on to the top metal rods of buildings, on to trees to escape the water, but they did not make it. In some cases, only limbs of people have been found. We are hoping people will still be found alive.”
Mr Marahatta said his relatives were shaken up by the extensive devastation and shared photos of the Dhading district that showed rows of houses on either side of the town bridge before the floods, and mud-caked debris after homes were uprooted in minutes on August 26.
In Dubai, a cricket tournament was organised by the Nepali community this weekend, and a decision was taken to hand over the proceeds and cash prizes to the Nepal Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund.
“We were sports lovers who gathered to promote cricket and health, and people wondered if we should cancel the games because of the flood,” Mr Marahatta said. “But we decided there was no point sitting quietly and getting more depressed. We decided to be action-orientated and give back to Nepal.”
Embassy appeal
Nepali residents in the UAE are in contact with registered volunteers at home to determine the food, clothes, torches and medicines required, which are then distributed through official channels.
The Nepali embassy in Abu Dhabi said the government had mobilised all resources for search, rescue, relief and recovery operations, “with particular attention to people who remain missing, including both Nepali and foreign nationals”.
“The government’s immediate national priority remains clear: to save lives, locate and rescue missing persons, provide urgent relief to survivors and ensure that affected Nepali as well as foreigners receive appropriate assistance and support,” the embassy said in a statement.
The government has said funds should be sent to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund and the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. The embassy said the support “would contribute significantly to ongoing relief operations and to the longer-term recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts”.
The scale of the devastation has had an impact on Nepali citizens overseas, most of whom know people who have lost relatives and friends.
“We are all devastated – everyone knows families who have been affected because it is such a grave crisis,” said Santosh Khanal, president of the Federation of International Nepali Youth Entrepreneurs in the UAE.
“When we first saw the news and images, I was lost. This level of a catastrophe is beyond imagination, with mountains washed away, boulders the size of mountains flowing down. We need to gather ourselves and reach out to friends to appeal to them to contribute through the PM’s fund. The response has been massive because the scale of the damage is unimaginable.”
