Nepal: death toll rises after devastating mudslides

In Nepal, emergency services are still searching for thousands of missing people while the toll continues to rise, with more than 950 dead, five days after the mudslide which devastated everything. How did the authorities communicate with residents just before the tragedy? It is by gaining height that we grasp the immensity of this Trishuli valley.

This is also where Inra was, on this mountain path, when the roar of the deadly flood sounded. “I saw people in tears, screaming and running everywhere to try to save their lives,” he says. “Do you see down there? It was a school, with 1,500 students.”

“The teachers did what they could, some directed the children towards the hills, but some of them, unfortunately, chose another direction.”

This father is upset in the face of so many deaths and in the face of this landscape as if frozen in the mud for eternity. Akass, an older gentleman, was building the upper floor of his house, with a bird's eye view of the river and the city around it. He explains that he saw the police arrive in a hurry a quarter of an hour before the wave to warn the population, shouting into megaphones. But “not everyone understood the urgency,” he regrets. People thought it was a normal flood, usual during this monsoon period. Akass thus lost her sister-in-law, her nieces, five members of her family in total. He says he won't stay here, too worried that it will happen again one day.

Five days after the disaster, and while there are still nearly 4,000 missing, rescue operations are still very complicated, if not impossible on the ground, because the river remains very turbulent and it would be too dangerous to search for bodies. The roads are still closed and will remain so for a long time, so the helicopter is the only way to access the villages high up, cut off from the world.

Since Monday evening, there has been an additional difficulty, the rain has been falling heavily again. The monsoon season is not over. Then, we will have to continue to transport equipment in this vast region, very mountainous, obviously, since we are in the Himalayas.

The call for donations is evolving, the Nepalese authorities indicate that they have received enough stocks of emergency food (rice, biscuits, etc.), but it is now very technical, very precise tools that are missing here: ropes, harnesses, stretchers, tarpaulins, but also chainsaws and construction equipment to clear and rebuild roads.