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“I was in touch with the family and they had started the 11-day mourning period,” a police officer said
NEED TO KNOW
- A 64-year-old woman was rescued from a collapsed four-story house after being trapped in the mud for 10 days following Nepal’s deadly floods
- “While walking around it, we heard a voice ‘save me,’ ” a police officer recalled
- As of Tuesday, Sept. 8, Nepal’s disaster management agency said that there have been 1,358 deaths and approximately 5,428 people who remain missing following the floods
A woman was rescued alive after being trapped under a collapsed four-story house for 10 days following Nepal’s deadly floods.
On Saturday, Sept. 5, rescuers heard a 64-year-old woman calling for help inside a collapsed home in Betrawati, Nuwakot, according to Reuters and The Washington Post.
“The four-story house was swept (away) by the floods and the house was left in the middle of a quicksand,” police officer Mahendra Darnal told Reuters. “While walking around it, we heard a voice ‘save me.’ ”
Footage released by the Armed Police Force (APF) showed rescuers making their way through the mud and collapsed infrastructure before providing the woman, later identified as Chandika Kumari Shrestha, with water and carrying her away from the building, according to Storyful.
Shrestha, who was reported missing on Aug. 26, was able to survive after finding a narrow pocket of air within the surrounding water and mud, Reuters reported. The rescue operation lasted approximately 45 minutes.
Prior to her rescue, Shrestha’s family presumed her to be dead and had already started mourning her death alongside the families of hundreds of others who went missing after the floods.
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“I was in touch with the family and they had started the 11-day mourning period,” Darnal told Reuters.
As of Tuesday, Sept. 8, Nepal’s disaster management agency confirmed that there have been 1,358 deaths and approximately 5,428 people who remain missing following the devastating flash flood near the Nepal-Tibet border.
Of the 341 foreign nationals who were initially reported as missing, 47 were Americans, according to the Associated Press.
Nepal’s tourism board said on social media that its stakeholders were “working to verify the whereabouts and safety status of tourists and travelers who were in or traveling through the affected areas.”
The country held a day of mourning on Monday, Sept. 7, lowering flags at government offices to remember those who were killed, the BBC reported.
The day of mourning marked the end of the traditional 13-day Hindu mourning period, during which close family members stay home and relatives visit to pay their respects.
