NEARLY 4000 PEOPLE MISSING
Nearly 4,000 people are missing in Nepal following the collapse of a Himalayan glacier on the border with China that triggered a tsunami-like wall of freezing water and debris that killed more than 1,000 in the region.
The family of Chandra Bahadur Newar also conducted his funeral in a similar manner.
Truck driver Newar, 35, was in Nepal’s border town of Timure en route to China when the disaster struck. He last spoke to his family the night before the floods.
“He had called after dinner as he always did,” said his wife, Dolma Newar Tamang. “He had said he would be back in not more than a week.”
When Tamang did not receive her husband’s customary morning call, she thought he must simply have been busy.
“But then I saw the news and called him,” she said. “I called repeatedly, but he never picked up.”
Newar’s family frantically searched for him.
Some headed north towards the site of the disaster, while others went downstream where hundreds of bodies had been swept away.
Tamang made multiple visits to hospitals and morgues in Kathmandu, where the family lives.
She said she finally made peace on Monday with the possibility that her husband may never come back.
“We had to do this to set his soul free, so that he is at peace and happy wherever he is,” she said, flanked by her sobbing son.