Believing that Chandika Kumari Shrestha had perished in the devastating floods in Nepal, her family began the mourning rituals for her. However, ten days later, rescuers discovered her alive inside her collapsed home in the badly affected Betrawati village. She had managed to survive in a small air pocket amidst the water and mud.
According to police officer Mahendra Darnal, the four-story house had been swept away by the floods, leaving it stranded in quicksand. While searching the area, they heard a plea for help saying, “save me.” In a 45-minute rescue operation on Saturday, Darnal and his team located Shrestha in a confined space and promptly transported her to an army hospital.
Darnal mentioned that he had been in communication with Shrestha’s family, who had already commenced the 11-day mourning period. Shrestha was one of the many missing individuals in Betrawati, one of the worst-hit regions in Nepal, where recovery teams are still discovering numerous deceased individuals.
The town’s market and numerous residential buildings, some towering up to four stories, were almost entirely buried under debris from the catastrophic flood that claimed over 1,300 lives in Nepal. Thousands of people are still unaccounted for.
Rescue workers, equipped with hard hats, were observed excavating with shovels and navigating through collapsed structures to locate any survivors. Five days prior, 24 bodies were recovered in a decomposed state from a building in Betrawati’s market area that had housed a small shop.
After eleven days since the glacier collapse triggered the disastrous floods, nearly 5,000 people are still missing. Hundreds of bodies have been carried to riverbanks far from the devastated Rasuwa district, with mass burials being conducted in Chitwan for unidentified and severely decomposed bodies.
Despite diminishing hope, authorities in Nepal persist in their search efforts for individuals trapped in tunnels and beneath the solidified mud deposits covering buildings. They have successfully rescued three individuals from tunnels since Friday, including a Chinese citizen near the Trishuli River, where over 900 people are believed to be trapped.
In extraordinary circumstances, survivors like Shrestha and an eight-year-old boy, who was also reunited with his mother, have defied the odds and lived through the catastrophic events.