‘Nothing is left’: Nepal flood survivors recount desperate escapes

For Raju Budhathoki, Wednesday morning began with the quiet routine of another working day in Nepal's remote Rasuwa district. Within minutes, however, the familiar landscape around him dissolved into a scene of terror, as violent tremors gave way to a wall of floodwater that swept homes away before his eyes.

Budhathoki, a customs agent, was resting in his room in Timure when, at around 8:45 am local time, the hillside began shaking violently, according to The Kathmandu Post. Convinced an earthquake had struck, he rushed outside and headed towards a nearby police post — only to see policemen fleeing as well.

He scrambled over a wire fence, injuring his hand in the process, and kept running. When he looked back, he watched helplessly as houses in the Timure market disappeared one after another beneath the raging waters.

He finally reached a forest around 500 metres uphill, where he found shelter and survived.

“From the forest, when I looked down at Timure, I never imagined I would get a second chance at life like this. Now everything feels like a terrible dream,” The Kathmandu Post quoted him as saying from his hospital bed in Trishuli.

Budhathoki was among those who survived the catastrophic Bhote Koshi flash floods and landslides that tore through the Nepal-Tibet border region around Rasuwagadhi before devastating settlements further downstream.

By Thursday night, police and rescue teams had recovered hundreds of bodies, while hundreds more people remained missing.

‘I just wanted to survive’

Another customs agent, Prakash Gautam, described an escape marked by confusion and darkness.

Gautam told The Kathmandu Post that a deafening rumble was followed almost instantly by darkness descending over the market, with a black cloud spreading across the sky.

“I ran out of my room without knowing what I was doing. I had no idea where to go or which way to run. I just wanted to survive,” he said.

From the forest above Timure, Gautam said, he could see a horrifying landscape below.

“From the forest above, I could see bodies scattered and floating in the floodwaters. Before my eyes, beautiful Timure was reduced to ruins. The houses and settlements were swept away. Now there is nothing but a vast expanse of sand and mud,” he said.

With rescue efforts unable to reach them during the day, Gautam and others spent Wednesday night in the forest. They survived on packets of noodles dropped by a Nepal Army helicopter, according to the report.

A Nepal Army helicopter finally arrived around 10 am on Thursday and flew them to Bidur.

“Only after boarding the helicopter did I feel that I had actually survived,” Gautam said.

A wall of mud and water

For Tulsi Bahadur Bhandari of Dolakha, survival came through a strange twist of fate.

A torrent of black mud and water suddenly engulfed the settlement, bringing houses crashing down one after another, Bhandari told The Kathmandu Post.

“I ran. But the force of the flood hit me and threw me violently,” he said.

The rushing water pushed him towards a hillside — a movement he believes ultimately saved his life.

“If the current had not thrown me towards the slope, I would not be alive today,” he said.

At hospitals and shelters in Bidur, Trishuli and Kathmandu, survivors are now recovering from injuries while grappling with the enormity of what they have lost — homes, relatives, colleagues and friends.

Ram Kumar Rana, who was caring for injured relatives in hospital, said some people were buried beneath mud and sand as they attempted to flee.

“The surge hit them as they were running and buried them. Rescue teams, with the help of helicopters, later pulled them out and brought them here,” The Kathmandu Post quoted him as saying.

He said the chaos was particularly terrifying for children, some of whom panicked, fell and suffered injuries.

Families wait for news

Across the affected districts, the devastation has left families desperately searching for loved ones who vanished in the torrent.

In Trishuli, Nuwakot district, families gathered at Sainik Maidan on Thursday to provide information about missing relatives.

“My father is there. He worked at a hydropower project in the affected area. He is missing. He was on duty that morning, and we have not been able to contact him since,” a local resident told PTI Videos.

Another survivor from Rasuwa described the destruction in a few devastating words.

“Nothing is left there. I have lost everything,” the survivor told PTI Videos, saying both his father and mother were missing.

Some residents said they received alerts advising people living near the river to evacuate, but the warning came with barely enough time to act.

“We received a news alert here at around 9:35, saying that the floodwaters had moved away and that everyone living in the river area should evacuate. But we simply did not get enough time to leave,” a local resident told PTI Videos.

“There used to be two bridges here. Now, there are hardly any houses left; only a few houses remain. I don't know how the government will manage the situation,” the resident said.

Rescue teams race against time

Rescue teams from the Nepal Army and other security agencies continued searching for survivors and missing people across Rasuwa, Dhading, Nuwakot and Chitwan districts.

A member of a rescue team told PTI Videos that the full scale of the disaster was still emerging, with initial reports pointing to a massive loss of life and nearly 1,000 people missing.

The flash flood originated in the Tibet region before surging into the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems, washing away bridges and local structures and severely damaging infrastructure, the rescue team member said.

Khagendra Sunar, a member of Nepal's Parliament, said moving survivors to safer locations and rebuilding devastated settlements would be a long and difficult task.

“Restoring the markets and the area will certainly take a lot of time. But the people who have survived need to be shifted to safer places,” Sunar told PTI Videos.

“Every party is contributing as this is a major disaster. It is not just the government's responsibility; it is the responsibility of all of us,” he said.

Foreign nationals among the missing

The disaster has also swept foreign nationals into its widening toll. Thousands remain missing, including people from more than 30 countries, while 288 Indian nationals are among those unaccounted for, according to Nepalese and Indian authorities.

As helicopters circle above ravaged settlements and rescue teams comb riverbanks and forests below, survivors are confronting a painful paradox: they escaped the floodwaters, only to return to landscapes stripped of the homes and communities they once knew.

For many, survival has brought not an end to the nightmare but the beginning of another struggle — finding missing loved ones, rebuilding shattered lives and coming to terms with places that no longer resemble home.

With PTI inputs