In a Nepali town buried in mud, families search for names and relief

BIDUR, Nepal — Gray mud covers this town on the Trishuli River. Broken branches and boulders lie where the flood left them. The taller buildings still hold their shape, but houses and shops that people lived and worked in have been reduced to debris. Rescue helicopters crossed overhead without a break on Saturday afternoon.

The Trishuli burst its banks in Wednesday's flood and took whole stretches of the settlement with it. Four days on, residents say Nepali authorities have brought them little real relief.

In heat topping 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), with no shade in sight, they stared at the river or pulled clothes and other necessities out of the mud and their flooded houses.

One resident pointed at what had been the family home.

"I barely got out with one pair of trousers and one T-shirt," Lakshmi said. "The house where six of us lived, my father and my daughter among them, and the village I spent 30 years in, were gone in an instant."

Bidur sits about 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of Kathmandu, three hours by road. Farther north, the damage is worse. Beyond Bidur lies the Upper Trishuli-1 hydroelectric power project in Rasuwa, where the nine Korean workers went missing, but the roads there have been washed out and the site cannot be reached by land.

That has made Bidur the end of the line. Foreign reporters, police and rescue crews have packed the town. Power came back on Thursday. Roads and the rest of the infrastructure will take far longer to restore.

"The authorities are giving rice and water to people who lost their houses, but there is nothing else yet," said a resident named Bhanu. 

An army base in nearby Trishuli has become the command center for the search. Several hundred people have gathered outside. A missing persons list, names packed together, is taped to one wall. People read it line by line, searching for their family members, craning their necks toward the sky whenever a helicopter comes in case a relative steps off.

Priya Kharel stood at the gate holding a flyer appealing for news of a missing younger sibling.

Discovering that she was speaking to a Korean reporter, Kharel said, "My younger sibling worked at the power plant Doosan is building and went missing in the flood."

"Please make sure Korea knows my sibling is still up there."

Families have also filled the big hospitals in Kathmandu. They come to ask whether an injured relative has been brought in — or, failing that, whether a body has been recovered. Dozens of flyers are pasted outside the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, each carrying a photograph, a name and the word "Missing."

"I came because I cannot reach my younger sister," said a parent pacing outside the hospital with a 9-year-old son.

Another wall carries photographs of the dead alongside their names. They range from small children to the elderly.

"My mother and father died in the flood," said Radhika, studying the pictures with reddened eyes. "I still cannot find my younger sibling, so I have been coming here since yesterday."

The flood began Wednesday in the Himalayan border between Nepal and the Tibet region of China. At least 750 people had died on both sides of the border by Sunday, and more than 3,000 were still missing. Nepal's disaster agency reported 734 deaths and 2,498 missing, and Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing.

The nine Koreans unaccounted for are employees of Doosan Enerbility and Korea South-East Power who were working on the hydroelectric plant. Seoul sent an 11-member rapid response team led by Lim Sang-woo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' government representative for the protection of overseas Koreans and consular affairs, and added nine more officials on Saturday.

BY BYUN MIN-CHUL [[email protected]]