Nepal floods: Survivors recall terrifying escapes from raging waters

The images of a mud-covered 97-year-old woman being carried to safety in the scoop of a digger have come to symbolise extraordinary stories of survival in Nepal’s devastating flash floods.

Guna Maya Bohara was pulled alive from the rubble of her care home after a four-hour rescue operation. Her doctors say she is recovering in hospital, while her great-nephew Dipak told BBC Nepali she looked like “a warrior” who had returned victorious from battle.

Hers is one of many survival stories from flood-ravaged areas of Nepal, where people fled collapsing settlements, sought refuge on hillsides and spent nights stranded in forests before rescuers arrived.

Fleeing Timure amid flood fury

For Raju Budhathoki, a customs agent in Timure on the Nepal-Tibet border, the disaster began when the hillside suddenly started shaking on Wednesday morning. Resting in his room, he initially thought an earthquake had struck, according to The Kathmandu Post.

He ran towards a nearby police post, only to find the police fleeing too. As he scrambled past a wire fence, he injured his hand. Looking back, he saw houses in the Timure market being swept away one after another, with some disappearing into the river within seconds.

Budhathoki eventually reached a forest about 500 metres uphill. “From the forest, when I looked down at Timure, I never imagined I would get a second chance at life like this,” he told the newspaper from his hospital bed.

Another customs agent, Prakash Gautam, also escaped to the forest after hearing a huge rumbling sound as the market was engulfed in darkness. Injuring his toe while fleeing, he reached higher ground, where he said he could see bodies scattered and floating in the floodwaters and Timure reduced to ruins.

Flood survivors cling to hope

Gautam and others spent Wednesday night in the forest, surviving on packets of noodles dropped by a Nepali Army helicopter. An Army helicopter arrived around 10 am on Thursday and flew them to Bidur. “Only after boarding the helicopter did I feel that I had actually survived,” he said.

For Tulsi Bahadur Bhandari of Dolakha, survival came by chance. A torrent of black mud and floodwater swept through the settlement as he tried to flee, collapsing houses around him. The force of the flood threw him towards a hillside. “If the current had not thrown me towards the slope, I would not be alive today,” he told The Kathmandu Post from hospital.

For 21-year-old labourer Sujal Thapa, there was no warning. Sleeping when the flood struck in Uttargaya village, he was swept several metres from his house and later found unconscious by security personnel. He suffered injuries to his leg, head and fingers, while his home was washed away.

Thapa is recovering in hospital but does not know where his mother is. His father remains in a village in Rasuwa, and he hopes to see him again.

A race between life and death

For Dipak Tamang, survival meant racing uphill as a wall of water, mud and stones tore through Timure market.

Tamang, from neighbouring Sindhupalchowk district, was in the town when the flash flood struck on Wednesday. He initially thought the ground was shaking. When he ran outside, several houses had already collapsed.

“There was not much choice for me. Behind me was the flood and in front of me was a wall-like hill,” he told Nepali news portal Onlinekhabar. He scrambled up the slope, falling several times and using thorny bushes and nettles to pull himself higher.

“It was my last race between life and death,” he said.

From the top, Tamang watched people being swept away, including some of his friends. “I could do nothing when my friends were swept away by the wave before my eyes,” he recalled.

He later found an old wood-storage shed in the forest, where dozens of other survivors took refuge. They spent the night there in the rain before Tamang was rescued about 24 hours later.

Survivors recount terrifying ordeal

Photojournalist Amul Thapa, who reached Trishuli shortly after the floods, described a market of 50 to 60 houses largely buried under mud, with only rooftops visible in places. Roads and homes had become almost indistinguishable, he wrote in Naya Patrika.

People searched desperately for missing relatives, while some students from Uttargaya Boarding School who had gone missing eventually returned after walking for six hours through the jungle.

Among those caught in the disaster were Indian-American couple Anjana Raja and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, who were stranded before being rescued and airlifted to Kathmandu. “I knew I was going to die,” Raja told CBS News.

Venkatesan said the approaching wall of debris looked like a 60- to 70-foot-high tsunami. “I could see this monster thing coming down,” he said.

Raja grabbed her husband by the collar and shouted, “Run”, before the couple jumped from their bus and raced uphill as houses collapsed around them. They climbed blindly through slippery mud and rocks until a guide led them to safety on higher ground.

“I saw death right in front of my eyes,” Raja said.

Venkatesan called their survival “nothing short of a miracle”.

(With agency inputs)