Nepal: immersion in the village devastated by a glacial flood

Today, only one road allows you to reach it. A France Télévisions team entered, on Sunday August 30, the village which paid the heaviest price for the terrible flood which hit Nepal. After an eight-hour drive, they are the first journalists to reach there since the disaster. Residents, also returning for the first time, observe the extent of the damage below. “Before, here, there was a market, there were hotels, there were really a lot of people,” one of them remembers. “Now I’m sad, nothing will be the same again.”

They tell our team that the mud has completely cut off the village from the rest of the world and ask if the journalists' drone could not ensure that there are survivors there. “Our friend thinks that one of his relatives is still alive. He wants to see,” says a resident.

A few meters below, our journalists are in fact prevented from going any further. “We realize how powerful the wave was. We are 150 meters above the level of the river and yet there is mud under our feet,” says Angélique Forget, the special correspondent for France Télévisions in Nepal. The drone, which then inspects the horizon, does not spot any signs of life.

But we see that the wave has destroyed entire sections of vegetation. “I realize, seeing the decor, that even his dead body, I will not be able to find it,” resigns the resident who was looking for his friend. Seen from the sky, the village, which had 1,500 inhabitants, is now submerged. Only a few high-rise houses held out.

While our team is filming images, the sound of a landslide surprises them. “It’s the stones in the water, they hit against each other,” assures a resident. The glacier that collapsed, causing the flood, is only 13 km away, and the water flow is rapid, raising fears of a new mudslide. Since the tragedy, only helicopters have managed to reach the village and those upstream.