Believing she had perished in the devastating floods that struck Nepal, Chandika Kumari Shrestha’s family began mourning her presumed death. However, ten days later, rescuers discovered Shrestha alive inside her collapsed home in Betrawati village, where she had managed to survive in a small air pocket amidst the water and mud.
Police officer Mahendra Darnal recounted the dramatic rescue, explaining that Shrestha was trapped in the remains of her four-story house, which had been swept away by the floods and left in a precarious position. After hearing her faint cry for help, Darnal and his team located her in a confined space and promptly evacuated her to an army hospital.
Despite being among the many missing individuals in the severely affected Betrawati area, Shrestha’s survival story brought hope amidst the tragedy. The town suffered extensive damage, with its market and residential buildings, some towering up to four stories high, buried under debris from the destructive floods that claimed the lives of over 1,300 people across Nepal, leaving thousands still unaccounted for.
Rescue efforts continued relentlessly, with workers tirelessly digging through the rubble, blowing whistles intermittently to signal trapped survivors. In a grim discovery five days prior, 24 bodies were recovered in a decomposed state from a building in Betrawati’s market area.
As the search for survivors persisted, the aftermath of the catastrophic floods revealed a staggering number of missing persons, with close to 5,000 individuals still unaccounted for eleven days after the disaster. The recovery operation extended beyond the immediate vicinity, with bodies washing up along riverbanks far from the epicenter, and mass burials being conducted for unidentified victims in distant areas like Chitwan.
Amidst the bleak outlook, rescue teams remained vigilant, focusing on locating individuals trapped in tunnels and beneath hardened mud deposits. Recent successful extractions, including that of a Chinese citizen near the Trishuli river, offered glimmers of hope amidst the ongoing tragedy. Notable survival stories like Shrestha’s and the heartwarming reunion of an eight-year-old boy with his mother served as beacons of resilience in the face of adversity.