For ten long days, the family of 64-year-old Chandika Shrestha had no reason left to believe she was coming home.

The flood had swallowed her house. Four relatives who were inside remained missing.

By the eighth day, her family had begun performing death rites.

Then rescue workers passing the wreckage heard something beneath the mud.

It was her voice.

Shrestha was found alive Saturday inside the upper portion of her ruined home in Betrawati, Nepal—one of two astonishing rescues carried out ten days after catastrophic flash floods tore through the region.

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The Kathmandu Post identified the survivor as Chandika Shrestha, a resident of Betrawati in Nuwakot district. She disappeared with four relatives when the August 26 flood ripped through the Bhotekoshi river basin.

An Armed Police Force team assigned to road work heard faint cries near the buried building Saturday morning and began digging by hand through the debris where an earlier search had found no sign of life.

What they faced was a home crushed, buried and pushed far from the place where it had stood.

Officials said the force of the flood had pushed the structure nearly 100 meters uphill. Three and a half floors were buried, leaving only part of the top floor exposed.

Rescuers smashed a window and crawled through thick sludge until Shrestha’s voice grew clearer.

The team had searched the same spot before and heard nothing. This time, every scoop of mud made the voice easier to follow.

They found her alive, covered in mud and able to speak.

The team gave her water, wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out. A Nepali Army helicopter then flew her to Birendra Hospital in Kathmandu for treatment.

Her family had already made an effigy from kush grass for the rites performed when a body cannot be recovered. Instead of completing those rituals, they raced to a hospital room.

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The news reached Shrestha’s relatives while they were mourning her. One family member told local reporters they rushed to the hospital and could barely believe their eyes when they confirmed she was alive.

Their relief is mixed with agony. The four relatives who were in the house with Shrestha remain unaccounted for.

Hours away, another rescue was unfolding in the darkness of a hydropower tunnel.

The Associated Press reported that Nepalese military personnel and South Korean disaster experts pulled Chinese worker Lu Haitao from roughly 225 meters inside a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-I hydropower project in flood-ravaged Rasuwa district.

Lu had repeatedly shouted when he saw the lights of search crews, but rescuers could not hear him. On Saturday, those lights finally stopped where he was waiting.

Lu was shivering and disoriented, but stable. He used translation software on an officer’s phone to communicate before being evacuated by helicopter.

His sister said the 49-year-old farmer and carpenter had traveled from China’s Henan province to work in Nepal in February. She learned he had survived only after his photograph appeared in the news.

His rescue brought the number of workers found alive at the Trishuli hydropower complex to three after two Nepalese workers emerged from another tunnel Friday.

The scale of the disaster remains staggering.

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In its Sept. 4 situation report, Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said more than 13,000 people had been rescued, while over 5,000 were still missing.

Authorities reported 1,287 bodies recovered at that point. The numbers were still changing as search and identification work continued.

Rescue teams from Nepal, India, China, South Korea and the United States have been searching damaged buildings, debris fields and hydropower tunnels. Hundreds of workers are still believed to be trapped across multiple project sites.

The official response has required drones, load carriers, tunnel crews and aircraft, while damaged roads and communications have complicated access. Nepal also requested ground-penetrating radar, high-capacity pumps and additional flood-rescue equipment from international partners.

Against that terrible backdrop, Shrestha’s faint cry and Lu’s unanswered shouts carried through the darkness long enough for help to reach them.

Ten days after the flood, two families received the news nobody dared promise them.

Alive.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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