File Photo: A man salvages a money and bottles of mineral water from his house affected by flash floods in Dhading District, Nepal
The village of Dhunge, once home to roughly 150 families, now lies in ruins, reduced to a swampy expanse with an ominous rotting stench — one of dozens of settlements obliterated by the floods. Upretti, 40, said he had less than a minute to escape when the floods struck.
“It was pasted on a chest that was floating,” said Rimal, 44. Rimal’s warehouse business, a few kilometres upstream, remained inaccessible, he said. “I have some important documents I really need,” he implored. “The house was inundated; I managed to get barely 100 metres away,” said Upretti, who ran a restaurant in the area.
Days after a wall of water and debris ripped through Nepal, Shanti Lamichhane sat on a fruit crate in the dirt where her village once stood, staring at what remained of her home. Across Nepal’s flood disaster zone, survivors are returning to villages reduced to mud and debris, searching for belongings, documents and fragments of lives swept away in minutes. Forced to flee for their lives without time to take anything with them, many survivors are now returning to salvage whatever might remain — or simply to see what became of what they once called home. Hari Prasad Rimal returned to his home in the village of Devighat, hoping to recover treasured belongings. He brought back a photograph of his daughter. “There was nothing else I could retrieve… Drone images showed only mud and debris where it had stood. In Dhunge, Navraj Upretti waded through knee-high sludge towards his home, flanked by two rescuers. All has been completely destroyed.