After believing that Chandika Kumari Shrestha had died in the catastrophic floods in Nepal, her family commenced the mourning rituals for the elderly woman.
However, ten days later, rescuers discovered her alive within the ruins of her collapsed home in Betrawati village, where she had managed to survive in a small pocket of air surrounded by water and mud.
“The four-storey building was carried away by the floods, leaving it perched on quicksand. While surveying the area, we heard a voice calling out for help,” stated police officer Mahendra Darnal.
In a rescue operation that lasted 45 minutes on Saturday, Darnal and his team located Shrestha in a confined area and transported her to an army medical facility.
“I was in communication with her family, who had already begun the 11-day mourning period,” Darnal added.
Shrestha was among the many individuals reported missing in Betrawati, one of the regions hardest hit by the floods in Nepal, where thick white deposits have formed, resembling concrete. Rescue teams are still working to recover numerous bodies.
Members of the Nepal Police and Armed Police Force (APF) search the residence of Chandika Kumari Shrestha, who was rescued alive on Saturday, in search of additional survivors and victims of the tragic flash floods and mudslides in Betrawati, Nuwakot district, Nepal on Sunday. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)
The town’s marketplace and many residential structures, some reaching four stories high, were nearly entirely buried under debris resulting from the floodwaters that ravaged the valley, part of a disaster that has claimed over 1,300 lives across Nepal. Thousands are still unaccounted for.
Rescue personnel, equipped with hard hats, were observed digging with shovels, while others crawled through the gaps of collapsed structures, periodically blowing whistles to alert anyone trapped and still alive.
Just five days prior, 24 bodies were discovered in an advanced state of decomposition in the market area of Betrawati, in a building that previously housed a small shop, according to Darnal.
Searching for signs of life
Eleven days after a glacial collapse resulted in the catastrophic floods, nearly 5,000 individuals remain missing.
Numerous bodies have been washed ashore along riverbanks far from the devastated Rasuwa district. In Chitwan, hundreds of kilometers away, several mass burials have been conducted for unidentified and severely decomposed remains.
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Despite the dwindling hope, authorities in Nepal are unwavering in their search for individuals trapped in tunnels and beneath the hardened mud deposits covering buildings.
Since Friday, three individuals have been rescued from the tunnels, including a Chinese national near the Trishuli river, where it is estimated that over 900 people are still trapped.
Others like Shrestha have managed to survive under extraordinary circumstances, including an eight-year-old boy who was also reunited with his mother.