Family Mourned Her for 10 Days, Then Rescuers Heard Her Cry

For 10 days, Chandika Kumari Shrestha’s family believed the elderly woman had died in Nepal’s devastating floods and began mourning her. Then rescuers walking near her collapsed home in Betrawati heard a voice calling for help.

“The four-storey house was swept away by the floods, and the house was left in the middle of a quicksand. While walking around it, we heard a voice: ‘Save me’,” police officer Mahendra Darnal said. His team spent 45 minutes on September 5 reaching Shrestha in a confined pocket of air and took her to an army hospital.

Shrestha was among hundreds missing in Betrawati, one of the areas hardest hit by the floods. The town’s market and most homes were almost completely buried beneath thick deposits of debris, some compacted nearly like concrete. Rescue workers in hard hats dug with shovels and crawled through gaps in collapsed buildings, blowing whistles for anyone still trapped alive.

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The four-storey house was swept away by the floods, and the house was left in the middle of a quicksand. While walking around it, we heard a voice: ‘Save me’.

The floods killed more than 1,300 people across Nepal, and close to 5,000 remained missing 11 days after a glacial collapse triggered the disaster. Crews continued recovering bodies, including 24 decomposed bodies found five days before in a building in Betrawati’s market. Hundreds of unidentified and badly decomposed bodies were also buried far from the ravaged Rasuwa district.

Despite fading hopes, authorities continued searching tunnels and mud-covered buildings. Since September 4, they had rescued three people from tunnels, including a Chinese citizen near the Trishuli River, where more than 900 people were believed trapped. Shrestha was not the only survivor found in extraordinary conditions. An eight-year-old boy was also reunited with his mother.

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I was in touch with the family, and they had started the 11-day mourning period.