Groups of Nepali citizens are intensifying efforts this weekend to deliver food and medicine to communities cut off by massive flash floods and mudslides.
The natural disaster on August 26 smashed bridges and swallowed up road networks, leaving more than 1,300 dead and tens of thousands with no access to the mainland or medical aid.
Nepali entrepreneurs and aid workers will travel by helicopter and trek through thick mud that has inundated villages and towns after the floodwater receded. They will deliver blankets, clothes, medicines and tents to remote communities.
Nepali-US citizen Shree Lamichhane reached the flood-hit areas of Trishuli Bazaar and Devighat two days after the flood, carrying essential supplies that his group of friends had collated in Kathmandu.
“This natural disaster is particularly heartbreaking because people have nothing left,” said Mr Lamichhane, who has businesses in Dubai, and travelled with friends from Nepal, Belgium and India to distribute aid to people sheltering in schools in the immediate aftermath of the flood.
“The real challenge is that people don’t have anything left. People who had a house, a car, a business, they will start from zero. The places they knew as home are too dangerous now. It’s my responsibility to do more for my community, specially when this has happened in my own country, so I’m returning this weekend to go to areas where less help has reached.”
Reaching survivors
More than 5,300 people went missing in Nepal and Tibet when a glacial collapse caused ice chunks and boulders to catapult downriver.
The Nepal army has fixed ziplines to transport medicines, injured people and residents across swollen rivers after access was cut off when bridges capsized. Two people were pulled out alive from a tunnel in Nepal near the Trishuli Hydropower project on Friday.
Mr Lamichhane returned to Nepal on Friday with friends to distribute more supplies.
“The government is using all its resources. We have found out which communities need what sort of supplies and will go to areas where little aid has reached,” said Mr Lamichhane, who lives in the US and travels to Dubai for his cell phone and restaurant businesses.
The scenes he witnessed immediately after the floods and the extent of the catastrophe have drawn him back to help.
“People are buried under the mud and rescuers are trying to take out so many bodies,” he said. “It’s as if the houses didn’t exist. Animals are dead too and there is a real bad smell.
“Helicopters are taking supplies across the river and police are using drones to find survivors. Entire cities are gone. When you see the few houses that remain, the fourth-floor walls are gone – that’s how powerful the water was when it moved up 40 to 50 feet above the waterline.”
Mr Lamichhane echoed the experience of aid workers in Nepal who said many families are still unable to reconnect in remote districts.
“When people came over the bridge, it’s hard to tell who is missing because entire families have been wiped out,” he said. “It will take months to find the actual data. We met an older gentleman who crossed the river for medicines and was still trying to find out if his wife had survived on the other side.”
Broken families
Kathmandu resident Rajani Thapa is travelling with other aid workers this weekend to places with no road access.
“It is heartbreaking. We want to reach places that are cut off because that is where so many victims are,” said Ms Thapa, vice president of the Junior Chamber International group providing relief support. “We know of places low on drinking water and food, so we have taken approvals to reach these areas.”
Ms Thapa has been travelling to flood-hit zones in the hard-hit Nuwakot district for days delivering food, medical supplies and sanitary pads.
“People have lost their hands and legs trying to save their family. There are so many people injured, and their families need long-term help with shelter and food,” she said.
“The most painful scenes are when parents are on one side of the bridge that no longer exists and they hope their child is on the other side. Both parties don’t know if the other is alive or dead. There are so many broken families we met. We try our best to help.”
Ms Thapa spoke of the arduous travel after the flood cut off transport routes.
“It’s difficult to travel because you get stuck in the thick mud,” she said. “There are half-broken houses in which people are still searching for their loved ones. In one case, a tree was stuck in a window five storeys high and people were trying to dislodge it.”
Anil Jung, an event manager in Kathmandu, is working with the Nepali Influencer Group to distribute aid.
“It makes me very sad to see my village Nuwakot in this condition; it’s like a cemetery,” he said.
“People are traumatised because they don’t know where their family is. There are bodies inside buildings buried in the mud, but people still hope they will find their family alive somehow.”
He said Trishuli Bazaar was popular as people from different villages would congregate to purchase offerings for religious festivals and pilgrimages.
“It will take a long time to get these villages back to stand on their own,” Mr Jung said. “What would take an hour of travel now takes six to seven hours because roads near the border are destroyed. Nepal needs a lot of help and support.”
