Nepal flood victims identified through photos as bodies remain unrecovered

Photographs of unidentified dead plaster the walls of a major hospital in Kathmandu.

The pictures are printed on A4 paper, displayed in the hope someone will recognise them.

But the rain regularly arrives before a loved one can — streaking and washing away the faces, forcing them to be reprinted.

Rescuers in the areas hardest hit in Nepal's catastrophic flash flooding have to prioritise survivors. They cannot bring all the bodies back, so photos are taken instead.

Hanging alongside the pictures of the lost is a noticeboard with lists of survivors and the injured.

Crowds of people gather at the gates of the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital desperately hoping they will find their loved ones on the latter.

Almost 2,500 people are now missing in Nepal after a glacial collapse sent a wall of water, mud and debris tearing through the valley on the border with Tibet, wiping out communities.

Some 517 bodies have been recovered on the Nepali side.

Hung next to the pictures of the deceased are smiling photos of those who are missing — remnants of better days.

Friends and family are taking matters into their own hands, posting pictures of the people they are searching for.

Police and volunteers are set up at desks taking the names and numbers of those who have missing relatives.

Some people come here multiple times a day in the desperate hope they will receive good news.

'His phone is not connecting'

Among the crowd at the hospital is Tilmaya Gurung. She has been visiting hospitals and morgues in the city searching for news of her sister's husband.

Meg Bahadur was working at a hydropower plant in Rasuwa when the flood hit. The 49-year-old has two children.

"We tried his phone several times but his phone is not connecting," she wept.

Her husband Jai Bahadur Gurung explained that the relatives split into groups to go to different sites to search for information.

He is trying to remain hopeful, but as the days stretch on the fear is building.

New methods for treatment developed

More than 400 injured people, airlifted from the disaster area, have been brought here.

Chief of the emergency medicine department Ramesh Kumar Maharjan said most of those patients had been buried in mud.

"People were buried from head to toe and they have chest injuries and limb injuries, fractures, as well as head injuries and aspiration," he said.

He said some of the people that had recovered from suffocation had "mud trapped inside them".

Staff have never treated patients like this before and are having to develop new methods, including a "decontamination shower" to remove the mud.

One of his patients is a five-year-old girl who had lost all of her family members. She is in critical care with a head injury.

This region is prone to natural disasters. It's been hit with earthquakes and more standard flooding before. But Dr Maharjan said this was a "different type of natural disaster" altogether.

Difficulty in accessing key locations

The flooding has destroyed roads and bridges, meaning the worst hit areas are only accessible by helicopter.

It is not only making it difficult to get injured people out, it is also making it difficult to get aid in.

Less than 10 kilometres from the hospital, at a specialist hub, people are loading trucks with supplies like hygiene kits, food, water, and protective equipment.

Hangers are lined up, filled with donations from all over the world.

The humanitarian staging area was already set up, built on experiences with previous natural disasters, and in some areas allowed supplies to arrive within five hours of the emergency being declared.

But getting aid to those most in need is incredibly difficult.

UN World Food Programme country director Riaz Lodhi said road access being cut to the worst hit areas was "very restrictive" and made it difficult to assess the situation.

Aid supplies are currently being trucked a certain distance before being transferred to helicopter to be flown in.

"It's an enormous challenge given the magnitude of the disaster," he said.