Nepal floods: 'It was like a tsunami'

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2:08some 100 km down Himalayan valleys in Nepal and Tibet. As we record this programme in London, on Friday lunchtime, Nepal's disaster agency reports that at least 1,300 people have been killed. More than 5,000 though remain missing, and survivors continue to be found. The Chinese state media says that on the Tibetan side, the official death toll is 21 with more than 540 people unaccounted for. It is very difficult to verify this figure because of the strict controls that China imposes on the foreign media. We'll hear later from families of people missing, but for our first conversation, we wanted to get a sense of what it was like for those directly caught up in the disaster. We brought together Sakil, his house was located 200 metres higher than the normal level of the Trishali river, and firstly, his friend Gordav, who owned a cafe some 10 km upstream. Anyone who knows our region known as living roaring

3:12zine, it gives life to our valley, drawing travelers, adventurers and local together. For me, that river valley was where I built my dreams. A small cafe born out of early mornings, in less passion, and the simple desire to create a warm space where people could gather over a cup of warmth and conversation. And that day, while I was having my coffee, a lot of children started running to the uphills. I asked what happened, and they said, a flood is coming. We got something like 5 to 10 minutes. I started running uphills, and I saw my cafe drawing by that flood with my phone. Within few minutes, we lost everything. Everything swept away. It was like tsunami. Even its colour, it was like cement plaster, like cement plaster. And if you go there right now, it's like a concrete over there. The colour was really different from the normal rivers. It was quite

4:13devastating. Did you think when the waters were coming that maybe there was a chance that you would get swept away in the floods yourself? I started running uphills, and my father was stuck there. I waited him. I sounded him to come over, but he just went to our farm, on tying my animals, cows, and with my own eyes, I can see those floor was coming towards us. And I grabbed his hand and pulled him upwards, then we ran. But all of my family somehow managed to escape. We all are fine. Even though I lost my business, my cafe, the place where I invested my six years, trying to make something different, all gone. But somehow I managed to save my family. Let's bring in Sakeel. Do tell us about what happened to you that day, the day of the flood. So everybody in my town talking about the flood is coming, flood is coming. Everyone of us, me including, we do not expect that much

5:18high, that much big flood is coming. Suddenly we got to know that the place where Kaura Cafe is located hasn't completely wiped out. One of our friend Carl from there, he told me that run, it's time to run. We don't have a time. Take your families, go uphill, it's time to run. Everything intrusively has been wiped out. We need to run right now. We live in a large family of 22 people. So it was so panic to collect each and everyone from my house and take them to the uphill. So I just start shouting, the flood is coming. Let's run. Let's run each and everyone. But the place from the uphill I see. Oh my god, there's two must try to go. Everything's wiped out. The buildings are collapsing. My house has been stopped and hit by a big lug. Just like the God of say, it was just like a tsunami. It's so high. My house is about

6:21200 meters from the river. But it was too high that it has just clean each and every things up to my third floor. Each and everything, my shop owned by my family completely gone. Each and everything I hold in my own completely gone. Only the lives have been saved. Nothing remains. My families are saved. My friends are missing. Still missing. It's so painful. I just see each and everything from uphill, my place where I was born. I was 37 years old right now. The memories is everything. It's totally painful. When I got rid of my heart, it starts to break. My assets have been gone. My memories stalks me and it may be so much painful. So that each and everything. I still can't imagine when I woke up, I was just screaming and everything.

7:26It's just not real. But I sometimes I know I go to know that it was real. We have so much pain. Everything has been gone. I lost my relatives. Four of my family, Karan Kativoda. We lost him. My uncle, Norendra Josi, he has not been found yet and many more. I really thank the friend, my brother, twice to run. He was the main reason that we and the neighbors, my village, were able to save their lives. If he hadn't called us, then my family and my neighbors were not able to save their lives. I just took a scooter. My brother took a car and put each and every member in the vehicles and run to the appeals. I took minutes. It's gone. My village is gone. I can see it from my whole eyes. Most of the people they listen, they didn't thought that something like that big would come.

8:34That's how they didn't make it yet. I'm still in my house that had been hit by the flood. I'm still holding my phone, seeing each and every thing and still can't believe that this is my house and it was been affected. Like the flood, everything is messy here. I just came here. Man has to grab my belongings. Everything has been clean and wiped out. Big, big logs came from the directions of our flood and hit the wall and clean each and everything. It's just like a clean and wiped out and someone puts mud about two or three meters mud each and everything. It's like a concrete. For me, I cannot process it for now. My mind cannot process it for now. But we have to start it from zero. I invested everything in that cafe and I have nothing left. For coming 10 years, I have to start it again from zero. It's really going

9:36to be hard. I think, would you want to start in the same place? Never. I'm never going to start it in that same place. I'm not going to start it in this district. It's quite risky. I cannot forget everything. What happened here? All of my childhood plays, it's all gone. I cannot stay here. All of my memories. If you see it today, there's nothing left. I don't want to stay here now. I would go somewhere else. Maybe Kathmandu. It's quite near from here. I cannot express how could I rebuild? My properties have been destroyed. My house has been completely destroyed. I was not able to stay here. But I'm not leaving my district because I live in a big family. I need to think of families too. I will continue my business, which is located 7 kilometers

10:37away from here. This is my place where I live. It was not a place where I do business. But living in this house, the river has changed its track. Now it's so much close to my house. I cannot stay here because the trauma really hurts in my brain. Every time I see there, it's just like a recalling everything that I feel in the day seven or eight days or so. So I don't think I'm going to stay here. What about the help that has been offered to you, those who've lost everything during the floods have you received enough help, Sakeel? Yeah, I, the locals, people and the donations. A lot of people are donating each and everything. But it's just not about donating. We are able to have food about the stelter. We are just concerning about the shelter. A lot of people have lots of goods donations

11:44and things have been provided. But when I think about the stelter, I lost my house. How could I rebuild it? It's a generation's, generations of work. How could I rebuild the same way that the way I leave the way I stay, the luxurious life I used to have. I don't think I could have the same way that I used to have. No one wants to stay here in this village. Everyone just seems like everything, a lost village. No one wants to stay here. That's for me. My business was already organized and I somehow started to earn some good money, you know, and I was giving jobs to few people, seven or eight people, you know, and for that, it takes a lot of courage to give the people here in Nepal to people, you know. I was quite happy

12:45about that. But now everything is gone. I cannot offer anything to anyone right now. I lost everything. But I think we can start over, you know. I'd like to say that it's just a pain, chickens. More than five decades of my father, my brothers. Hard working, hard to wipe out. You take years and years to build something which can be destroyed in a pain in this. So that's it for everyone who is listening to enjoy your life, the care of your families, the care of your friends, the care of your health. Think about now, not about the fusions. We'll leave your life right now. Understand these ten units we have lost each and everything, each and everything. Should be your moment. I just feel right now that you need to feel and leave in a moment, not for the days, not for the years. Enjoy your time right now.

13:49Godav and Sakhil in one of the areas worst affected by the floods in Nepal. I'm James Reynolds. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's, make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra. With a big Mac or ten piece Mac nuggets, fries and a medium coke all for just nine dollars. Limited time only promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Self-directed investing, trading, full service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning, few, and to think. That's just a small taste of what Shwab offers. Because Shwab knows that when

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15:58Australia and the US are still missing. For our second conversation, we brought together two people whose loved ones haven't been heard from since the disaster. In a moment, Sandeep in India, his niece is missing. Firstly, Vaishnavi, she's in Sydney, Australia. She's missing four members of her family. My sister, so she's my oldest sister, Shia Laja, my brother-in-law, Chandrushaka and Raleigh Baron, and my young nephew, Ashrin, who's 14 years old and our issues 11 years old. They were in Nepal specifically for a structural pilgrimage for Mount Kailash, and they were looking to cross over to the other side that day, I believe, and then do two smaller expeditions before they actually started the pilgrimage and the actual Mount Kailash. So the last we heard of them was we had a friend call and that was at 6.47am, Nepal time, on the 26th of August. They were just saying that they're getting ready to go and have breakfast,

17:04and they'd shown us just the location, there was a video call, what it looked like outside, and how forceful the river was. And yeah, that was it. And we did him here from them since then, and it's now been eight days, almost nine. In the moments after the flood, I imagine you spent this huge amount of time trying to get in contact with them. It was late in the middle of the night for us, and I'd woken up, and then I'd looked at my phone, and there were just these messages from my other sister, and we would just said, oh, they're missing, they're missing Vaishi, and there were so many missed calls, and I was like trying to gather my thoughts. So I essentially didn't know what to do, and I got up, then I called her, and then I was like, what do you mean? It was as it would be for anyone, just I kind of described in words that feeling, just couldn't even imagine that it was happening, to be honest, I still can't believe that it's

18:04happening. We tried to contact them, I messaged all of them, they were part of a group that went together from Sydney, so there were 14 of them who are traveling together. So I know very closely other members who are traveling with them as well, so I was just calling all of them, messaging them, we just want to know that you're safe, please reach back to us, yeah, helpless, I guess, that's the only thing we meant. Each of these days just keeps running into the other, we wake up, and we barely sleep first of all, it's sleepless nights, and then you wake up, and it's another day, and then all of a sudden I've been on my phone doing my own searches, looking at the location, what it looked like before, what it looked like after, and the days just slipped into the nights, and then we're already here, so it's so hard for me to even recall last week, and exactly what we did, but in terms of support, we have an incredibly

19:09supportive family here, and you know, we're all just doing our best to try and support this search effort, and you know, find our family, bring them home, the most that I can do right now, and that's my focus is to, you know, keep the awareness there, and keep asking that, you know, the search continues, because we can't give up on them. Thank you so much, Vaishnavi, and I'd like to bring in Sandy, you've been searching desperately for news of your beloved niece, Priyanka, who I know is like a daughter to you. When is the last time you heard from her? I spoke to her on 22nd when she was at Mount Kailash, and she had called me, if you made a video call, and she was so happy, she was brimming with joy, she was glowing, that was the happiest I've ever seen her. Where is the best place for you to be? Is it to stay in India to get information, or would it be to try to go to Nepal itself? From my nephew and a couple of other family members,

20:10they have returned today from Nepal, they were there for the last five days, they went up to the Shuli River, the town also to Shuli Town, and it was entire area devastated. You don't see any human being there. The only people you see are people who are trying to rescue. The government is doing very good, the emergency response teams are doing this job. It takes a lot of efforts to be in this kind of situation where you don't find anyone alive. I'm sorry to say, but whatever the bodies are being recovered, they are in big NPSs, like very few of the bodies are recognisable. So even for the response teams, that's a that's a weight of job. We can't even image it, we can't even image it, so when they see so many dead people daily, that's not an easy job. Looking at the damage that happened and looking at the work that Nepalese authorities and the emergency response team have been doing out there, it's absolutely incredible in my opinion.

21:15The terrain over there is so dangerous and unpredictable as well, and I know that they've been working tirelessly, going back and forth, rescuing people, and you hear those miracles as well, where they've rescued a one and a half month old baby or that six-year-old girl, and to me, that's incredible. I've been in contact with the Australian authorities also on this side, and I am appreciative of both in what they've been doing to date, but I think for me, beyond that is that I think more can still be done. I don't believe that we can be happy with just this much. I think as long as there are people who are missing, we believe that every option available should really be explored, and for me, I just want the search to intensify, because my family, I have hope, and I want them to be found, and it's already been eight days, so I don't know what situation they're in, but we need to rescue them so that we can bring them home safely.

22:15Sandy, but a question to you and also to Vaishnavi. I mean, the search is there a part of you that has to be ready for the possibility, or perhaps the probability that Sandy, in your case, your niece might not be found alive. See, the area where she was, that is all flattened, that debris are 35 feet high, that small township of maybe 2,000 people that's all gone, there's nothing left there. I would like to see her again, that's the wish I have, but chances of survival in that area are very remote, because there's nothing left there. For me and my family, so far we don't have any answers yet, and while we are still searching for them, we will hold on to hope. We know where they were last known to be, we know that the most recent reports are suggesting that those areas are still difficult to access, but people are there now accessing those areas.

23:17I think specialist assistants may be needed and to search more of the surrounding areas, but until we know what happened, we're going to continue to hope and you know, just ask for every reasonable search effort to continue. We truly believe that target that specialist search and rescue needs to be undertaken. We've looked at the area, we researched what else is around there where they could have gone. On that day, track strails, certain sites that they might have visited, and if they had done that, then they had that chance, escape and survive. So we continue to hold on to her, because that's what we can do for our family members at the moment. And Fashinavi, tell me a bit more about them, about your sister, your brother and your nephews. They're everything to me, they're my best friends, they who I turn to for literally everything, the most super question that I might have, I need to run everything by them, and you know, they put up with all of that. And my brother-in-law, he's like a pillow for our family, he's the reliable one,

24:20you know, I can go to him in times of despair, and I know that he's the one who's going to stand there and stick to his word and support me as well. And my nephews, they're so young and they're the youngest missing Australian citizens. Ashrin is 14, as I already said, and Arush is only 11. I can't imagine my life without any of them and with the youngest too, they have so much more to give still. They're so much more to experience, they're so innocent and they're so good. I hope that they can experience more and I want to see all of them return back home. And Sandy, tell us more about Yonise Priyanka. She was the infected, I'll just get in the family, the most brilliant one. She did her dental school, but she wanted to do more than that. And she worked hard and registered in Cardiff University for doing her clinical research. She came back to India, published a couple of

25:23papers, then she was accepted in Ulu University in Tenland to do her PhD on some diabetic research. Right now she was a postdoc student there as well as she was associate professor in the university. And only two years back she had become citizen there. Her husband is also devastated. He's in a bad shape. He is in Finland and alone there while all the family is together here. So she was with Isha Foundation's group. They had I think more than 1,000 people in that region. It here are missing. As Roshnais just said that till we have the answers and till we have the closure for us, she's still there. We're all in this together. As you said, I think all of us who are missing family as a result of the floods that happened in Nepal, I think we're all going through the same feelings. We're all just holding on to her at this stage. We're setting for answers. That's all.

26:28Faishnavi and Sandi, each waiting for news of those they love the most. We appreciate their decision to speak to us and that of Godav and Saqel sharing their experiences of the disaster in Nepal. I'm James Reynolds. You've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This summer don't squeeze in, spread out, find homes big enough for your whole guest list on Verbo. That's vacation rentals done right. Book your stay now.