An elderly woman has been rescued alive after spending 10 days trapped beneath the debris of her collapsed home following floods in Nepal.
Chandika Kumari Shrestha’s family had believed she had died in the floods that devastated Betrawati village and had already begun traditional 11-day mourning rituals. But on Saturday, rescue teams found her alive in a cramped air pocket surrounded by water and mud, reports Reuters.
The 45-minute rescue operation was led by police officer Mahendra Darnal and his team. Officers patrolling the area heard a voice calling “save me” from the ruins of Shrestha’s four-storey home, which had been swept away by the torrent and left stranded in deep quicksand.
After being rescued, Shrestha was immediately taken to an army hospital.
“I was in touch with the family and they had started the 11-day mourning period,” Officer Darnal said.
Betrawati, in the badly affected Rasuwa district, remains covered in thick white deposits that have hardened to a concrete-like consistency. The town’s marketplace and most residential buildings, some as high as four storeys, were almost completely buried by the deluge.
The disaster, triggered by a glacial collapse 11 days ago, has killed more than 1,300 people across Nepal, while nearly 5,000 remain missing and thousands are still unaccounted for.
Rescue efforts are continuing in hazardous conditions. Emergency workers wearing hard hats are using shovels to clear debris, crawling through gaps in damaged structures and periodically blowing whistles in an effort to locate survivors.
The scale of the devastation was underscored five days ago when 24 decomposed bodies were recovered from a building housing a small shop in Betrawati’s market.
The destruction extends well beyond the immediate valley, with hundreds of bodies swept onto riverbanks far from Rasuwa district. In Chitwan, hundreds of miles away, authorities have carried out several rounds of mass burials for unidentified and badly decomposed victims.
Despite diminishing hopes, Nepalese authorities continue to search tunnels and areas beneath the thick, hardened mud. Since Friday, rescuers have pulled three people alive from tunnels, including a Chinese national near the Trishuli river, where more than 900 people are believed to be trapped.
While the death toll continues to rise, extraordinary survival stories have provided brief moments of hope. Alongside Shrestha’s rescue, an eight-year-old boy was also pulled from the debris and reunited with his mother.
