“Everything is lost”: Inside Nepal’s devastated flood zone

“The water appeared around the corner like smoke,” Gita Devi Kalwar said as she recalled the floods that struck Bidur in Nepal’s Trishuli River Valley. Residents shouted for people to run as the water rushed toward their homes.

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The water appeared around the corner like smoke.

Gita held on to her husband and escaped. She said those who could run survived, while those who could not were swept away. When she and her family returned several days later, their home, motorbikes, documents and savings from a small business had disappeared beneath mud, sediment and debris.

Her 17-year-old daughter, Rishika, had been in Kathmandu when the disaster struck. She returned after hearing the news and described the flood as a tsunami that had taken everything. Yet she said her parents’ survival was the most important thing in her life.

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Those that could run lived, those that could not were swept away.

The destruction stretches along the riverbed, where damaged homes and businesses stand in the mud. Residents search the debris for belongings, while workers try to recover a bank safe buried nearby. The flood transformed the valley within minutes, and the damage could take decades to rebuild.

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The biggest thing for me is that my family is safe.

Bidur has become a key point for relief because roads still reach the town, unlike many settlements farther upstream. Helicopters leave from the local army barracks with rescue teams and supplies, then return with survivors from communities cut off by the floods. The barracks has also become a meeting place for families searching rescue lists, including Suresh Shah, who is looking for an uncle working as an engineer on a customs building near the Chinese border. “We don’t know whether he is dead or alive,” Shah said. His uncle’s name was not on the list he had seen.

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We don’t know whether he is dead or alive.