Photos: Nepal flood survivors find little trace of former lives

When Anusa Thapa Magar rushed home from her job in the Maldives after hearing of Nepal’s devastating floods, she clung to the hope that her grandmother had somehow survived.

Instead, when she reached Betrawati, the small riverside town where her family lived, she found only a flat expanse of hardened grey silt.

There was no house, and no Betrawati.

“If my house is buried underneath, that means my Aama is still here underneath too, right?” the 23-year-old said quietly, standing where the family’s two-storey home once stood. Her grandmother, who could barely walk, was last seen resting on her bed.

Last month’s torrent of mud, rock and water, triggered by a glacial collapse in the mountains along the Nepal-China border, tore through settlements along the Trishuli River, killing at least 1,386 people on the Nepal side. Authorities say 5,130 are still missing, and while searches continue, it has been days since anyone was found alive.

To reach what used to be Betrawati, survivors now climb a steep hillside, cross a narrow ridge and descend into a wasteland. Along the route lie scattered shoes, school ties and children’s backpacks – “silent evidence”, residents say, of the panic as people scrambled to flee the surging floodwaters.

Garment business owner Kalpana Thapa Magar, 43, recalled the moment a friend phoned from upstream. “Run! Run!” she was told. “I just ran. When I looked back, everything was gone, even the people who had been running behind me,” she said.

Downstream in Devighat, shattered shells of houses still stand. Some residents pick through the rubble for belongings, but many say there is no reason to return; the land itself has vanished beneath debris.

For many here, the disaster reopens wounds from Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people. Teacher Sita Thapa Magar, 45, Kalpana’s older sister, said that after the quake, families were at least able to rebuild on their plots. “This time, we have lost everything,” she said. “Our houses, our land, our future.”

On a single broken floor tile – the last visible trace of her home – 61-year-old Shanti Dangol clutched a photograph of the three-storey lodge she once ran for pilgrims and trekkers.

“Economically, people here had started doing well,” she said. “Now, nothing remains.”