Bibek Kumal, a 24‑year‑old Nepali labourer, was digging a toilet pit outside a newly built house on Wednesday when a wall of water, mud and rock came roaring down, sweeping him and everything nearby away.
Kumal was working in Bidur, downstream from the worst‑hit Rasuwa district near Nepal’s Himalayan border with Tibet, when he heard a hissing sound.
His four co‑workers, standing above the five‑foot (1.5‑metre) deep pit, shouted at him to get out and run. By the time he scrambled out, they had already fled, reports Reuters.
“I started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake,” Kumal said from his bed at Kathmandu’s National Trauma Centre, with his brother Dinesh beside him.
Swept downstream amid mud and debris, Kumal said he survived only because he was caught in a mango tree. “Luckily I was stuck up in a mango tree. Had there been no mango tree, I would have been washed away to death.”
The flash flood has killed at least 160 people, with hundreds including many foreigners still missing in one of Nepal’s worst disasters, AFP reports.
Three others injured in the flood were being treated alongside Kumal, while more survivors were transported to Kathmandu. Authorities said more than 114 people had been rescued so far and were receiving treatment at hospitals in Kathmandu and Rasuwa.
