Houses and land were lost due to major floods in Nepal... Victims "want to move to a safe place"

(Hanoi = Yonhap News) Correspondent Park Jin-hyung = Due to the massive floods in Nepal, not only numerous houses and buildings, but also the land along rivers and valleys were covered in thick mud and water and disappeared.

Nepal's government and residents are now trying to rebuild collapsed houses and buildings, but as the land itself is lost, they are in a position to find a new safe place to prepare for future floods.

According to the AFP news agency on the 5th (local time), Pavitra Ramsal (45, female), who had lived in Nuwakot, a flood-affected area in Bagmati Province, north-central Nepal, for over 40 years, lost her two houses and rice fields as they were swept away by the flood.

“There is a river flowing right where our house was,” said Ramsal, who was waiting his turn at a food distribution center in Nuwakot. “There is no land left.”

“All our money was swept away by the river,” he said, lamenting that he and his family of nine had no idea where to live in the future.

Shanti Sunar, 45, who survived along with her husband but lost her home and small shop to the flood, told Reuters, "I go to the site almost every day. I can recognize where my house was, but now there's not even a trace left."

“We can't build houses again on that site because it's not safe,” Sunar said. “I hope the government will move us to a safer place.”

According to the Nepal Disaster Management Agency, about 1.6 million people, about 5% of Nepal's total population, were affected by this major flood, and about 20,000 houses were left uninhabitable, including about 7,500 houses that were completely lost.

Therefore, these houses need to be built new, but a significant portion of the damaged area is completely submerged in water or covered with sediments such as mud and silt that are several meters thick.

In addition, as climate change accelerates the melting of Himalayan glaciers, concerns about future floods are growing, and authorities are unsure where to start with reconstruction, Bloomberg News reported.

In addition, as many buildings other than houses, including schools, were lost to the site due to this major flood, the concerns of the reconstruction authorities are growing even more.

Rajendra Dawadi (47), principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nuwakot district, which made international headlines by quickly evacuating about 900 students and staff during the flood, said, "This disaster is more serious" than the great Nepal earthquake that took about 9,000 lives in April 2015.

Principal Dawadi told AFP, "The school was completely destroyed during the earthquake, but we rebuilt it. Back then, we had at least some land left, but this time we lost not only the building but also the land."

“This place is no longer safe,” he said, emphasizing that a new site is needed to rebuild the school.

Govind Raj Pokharel, former head of Nepal's National Reconstruction Agency (NRA), who led the reconstruction work after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, asked Bloomberg, "When there was an earthquake, even if the house collapsed, there was land left so we could rebuild. But where should we rebuild this time?"

In response, Disaster Management Agency Director Dharma Raj Upreti said, "There is no point in rebuilding houses in the same place. Doing so will only expose people to the same risks (as in this major flood)."

He added that authorities are therefore trying to identify safer areas for building.