The first thing is the noise – chopper blades cutting through the air as helicopters come and go from the main army response centre, at the entrance to Nepal’s flood zone.
Then, there is the smell. A putrid, iodine smell. Blood and bone. The severe heat beating down on bodies packed into white bags – being carried off helicopters and laid in an area so families can identify them.
On Sunday the combined toll in Nepal and Tibet climbed to 781 dead and more than 3,000 people missing. Forty-three of them are Australians. The humanitarian crisis on the ground is huge – but aid, a large amount of it from Australia, has started to arrive.
An additional $3m, on top of $5m already announced, was confirmed on Monday morning.
The army barracks have become the heartbeat of the crisis – bringing survivors in, taking supplies out and trying to place the dead with their families, so they can be laid properly to rest.
“With every helicopter there are mixed feelings,” says Plan International’s Unni Krishnan, who is on the ground in the Nuwkot district to oversee the response.
“It’s a scene of hope and despair – there are families here who have been waiting for three days to hear about their loved ones … Some of them will arrive and some of them will not.”
Outside the army barracks, the single road entering Nepal’s flood zone was busy on Sunday. While family members gather outside the gates, waiting for news, huge parcels of supplies are making their way up the valley. The response is still in crisis mode – focused on clean water, enough food and shelter.
“We’re seeing the true nature of the floods,” Krishnan says. “It’s reconfigured landscapes and lives.
“Homes are destroyed. We can see spaces, doorways, where barely a cat or a dog could get through now, where people used to walk through. It’s all gone.”
‘It was seconds’
Plan International are part of the massive coalition of Australian charities operating under the Emergency Action Alliance to deliver urgent relief. On Sunday evening, the Australian government tipped another $1m into the hat, bringing the total amount, including public donations, to $3.8m.
Getting the basics in is hard. Huge trucks have drop supplies off at the beginning of the flood zone, where they are kept in makeshift storerooms. The next day it can be picked up by smaller 4WDs and taken up the valley.
The government is tightly controlling what goes where. After the 2015 earthquake, where the response was rapid but disorganised, communities were forced to bury non-essential items, so international charities are not allowed to distribute things themselves. When aid reaches an area, it’s registered with an official, who then distributes it.
Workers have been able to reach the worst-hit district, Rasuwa, but have not been able to get as far as the border checkpoint, where many of the missing Australians were last heard from.
One aid worker in Bidur, who was not cleared to speak to the media, says his colleagues who had managed to get up the valley had estimated that as many as 70% of the people living there were lost.
“Because down here they had warning, maybe 10-15 minutes,” he says. “But up there it was seconds. So there will be bodies trapped in the mud, that will be difficult to identify and difficult to rescue. And the smell, the smell.”
Another worker says the people who survived the floods have moved up on to the hills – staying in makeshift relief centres or with relatives. Many of the villages have been cut off completely. In Bidur, hundreds of people are stuck on the wrong side of the river after the bridge was washed away. There is a market but, once they eat through the supplies left, the only option will be aid drops by helicopter.
On Sunday night, hundreds of gathered across Australia to hold candlelight vigils for Nepal. The connection between the two countries runs deep – there are 200,000 Nepalese diaspora living in Australia.
‘Namaste’
Here, on the other side of the world, the connection cuts through the tragedy.
Bhagat Lal, 68, is sitting outside his house just 100 metres away from the river. He hears an Australian accent and launches into a greeting: “Namaste,” he says.
One of his sons is studying in Brisbane. Although they have family missing, his son will stay in Australia until they have more information. Through a translator, Lal explains how his relatives, two mothers and two children, are missing. Their whole house was found washed up on the bank of the river, 100 metres from where they lived.
“From the ground level, the river was flowing nine, 10 metres high,” Lal says. “It shook the house … the house got carried 100 metres away.”
After the aid trucks are emptied, the Plan International team head up the hill to the relief centre, where they are dropping off a water tank.
The centre has become home for 92 displaced Nepalese; 53 of them are children. A worker from the centre points to one young boy – both his parents are gone. The girl next to him: no one knows where her mother is, but her father is here.
Many of them are from the Rasuwa district. Some were found by the Nepalese army; others walked. One group of children, some dressed in their school uniforms, walked for more than six hours to get to Bidur.
They sleep on the floor in large shared rooms, or on makeshift hospital beds that have been brought in. Lunch is served – noodles and veggies. Some of the kids are given haircuts. Their days are spent sitting in the shade or running around with the dogs. Others wrap themselves fully in blankets, lying inside, their heads covered from the world.
‘Everything is gone’
Sulochana Tamang, 30, is staying at the centre. She was rescued from the side of a mountain, her two children aged seven and two, in her arms.
“My town is on the border of Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts,” she says through a translator.
“When the flood came, me and my husband grabbed our children in our arms, and we just ran. We fled up the mountain.”
After two days, they were found by the army, who helicoptered them to the barracks. The family of four survived, but they have lost relatives. Tamang stares out over the mountains.
“There are around 80 households in my village. Everything is gone. There is nothing remaining.”
Like the others, Tamang will live at the centre, possibly for months. There is nowhere else to go.
Plan are going to bring in learning materials, so the children don’t miss too much of their schooling. They will make sure the food is nutritious and see if they can get clowns without borders over to bring in some joy.
“The scale of the distraction is clearer today,” Krishnan says. “But we are also seeing increasingly how people in Nepal are united and people in the rest of the world are with them.
“The contributions of the Australian public have been a huge boost, because the relief workers are reminded they’re not alone in that crisis.”
