Nuwakot, NEPAL: Some survivors of the deadly floods on the Nepal-China border ran for their lives, others narrowly missed disaster, but all were eyewitnesses to a major calamity and its aftermath.
Rescue crews in helicopters have been plucking survivors from along the valleys ravaged in the tsunami-like flow of water and debris apparently unleashed by a glacier’s collapse.
More than 1,400 people were still missing on Friday (Aug 28) – many of them foreign tourists – and over 550 people were dead.
Here is what survivors told AFP:
“SUDDENLY ENGULFED US”: THE PILGRIMS
Sivaranjani Muthunathan was travelling in Nepal by bus with 56 others from India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu. They were heading towards the Chinese border when they became stuck in what they thought was a traffic jam.
“Then there was fog, smoke, something that seemed to suddenly engulf us,” Muthunathan, 46, told AFP, showing a video she recorded on her phone of a torrent surging towards her.
Vehicles were swept away or buried under mud around them.
“One by one, we also climbed out through the driver’s side,” she said, recounting how she had then scrambled up a hill.
Another pilgrim who was on the bus, 53-year-old Vijayabhuvaneshwari, said: “We had no choice.”
“Every vehicle in front of us, behind us, was gone,” she told AFP.
“As we were climbing up, we could hear what felt like explosions,” she said, giving only one name. “They were rocks and boulders crashing.”
With older members of the group struggling to climb the bank, Poonguzhali Ponmambadan, 61, unwrapped her sari dress and gave it to her husband to use as a rope.
“He used it as a harness to lift several old people,” she said.