The hospital walls are covered with posters of missing people, the glue still wet underneath. There’s a schoolgirl smiling in her uniform, a happy baby with chubby cheeks, a couple beaming on their wedding day, a young man standing proudly on a mountain peak with his hands on his hips, and a young girl with flowing hair peeking out from behind a door. These faces are just a small sample of the thousands who have vanished since deadly flash floods tore through the Himalayas and wiped out entire villages. By Saturday morning, the number of missing had climbed to nearly 3,000 across Nepal and Tibet.
So far, Nepal has recovered 669 bodies, but many remote areas have only been reached by army helicopters searching for survivors. Rescuers said it’s too hard to guess how many more people might be buried under the mud.
Identifying the dead is also a massive challenge. In the Nepalese city of Chitwan, morgues are overflowing with bodies, and a temporary building has been set up to hold them. Some bodies were carried so far downstream by the flood’s force that they were found in neighboring India.
At Tribhuvan University teaching hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, desperate relatives gathered hoping for any news. Four days after the disaster, people were still crowding around the police desk to report missing family members. Hundreds of the injured are recovering in the hospital’s wards, and people were frantically checking patient lists, desperate to find any sign that their loved ones were still alive.
With little information available and affected areas almost completely cut off, many families have turned to making posters to ask for help. Yavraj Lama said his sister, her husband, and their two children went missing after their village of Jaydada in Rusawa district was completely washed away. His eyes filled with tears as he glued a photo of one-year-old Sijan Tawang—a baby held in his mother’s arms—to the hospital wall. A picture of 12-year-old Sahil, his brother, hung next to it.
“We’re numb, we don’t have words to express how sad and distraught we are,” said Lama. “Our main focus is trying to find baby Sijan. He was so sweet and innocent; it’s impossible for us to think he’s no longer with us.” He added, “But their whole village has disappeared, so we have no hope left that any of them survived.”
Monita Nepali, 22, wailed in grief as a poster of her missing husband Vishal Nepali, 30, was pinned to the hospital wall. They had married six months ago, and his job as a driver often took him to the border between Nepal and Tibet. She had spoken to him an hour before the floods hit, when he was out for a morning walk in Rusawa. He promised to call her that evening, but his phone has been off ever since.
“I don’t want to live on this earth without him,” she said. Four days may have passed, Nepali said, but she still believed her husband would return. “I feel it in my heart that he will come back.”
For some families, the scale of the loss was too much to take in. Tulmaya Tamang, 36, came to the hospital with posters of some of her 12 family members, including her five-month-old niece, who lived in a village in Rusawa.and have not been seen since the floods. “Our family is under tremendous stress,” she said. “So many are gone, and those of us who are left behind are struggling.”
As hopes for their survival faded, Tamang said they were now just hoping the bodies could be found. “If we had the bodies, then at least we could have peace,” she said. “Otherwise, the family will never stop wondering, and this pain will last for a very long time.”
At least 900 of those still missing were working on the large hydropower projects along the Trishuli River corridor, high in the Himalayas, which were destroyed by the floods and mudslides. Many of the workers were low-paid laborers, including at least 63 from India.
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A Nepali soldier rescues a survivor from a hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa district, Nepal. Photograph: Nepal Army Handout/EPA
On Friday, dramatic footage showed Nepali soldiers pulling several survivors out through a thick wall of mud from a tunnel in the Trishuli-1 hydropower project. The Nepali army said they believed at least another 100 people were still trapped inside the tunnels, as well as dozens more trapped underground in the Trishuli-3 hydropower plant.
Among those missing was 24-year-old Sujan Nepali, who had just finished his night shift at the hydropower project and was asleep in bed when the wall of water came rushing down the valley. At the hospital trauma center in Nepal, his sister, Sushisha Maluwar, had returned anxiously every day to check if his name was listed.
“We haven’t lost hope,” she said. “We are writing down his name at the hospitals and putting up his photographs everywhere, hoping that we might find him somewhere. Maybe he has already been rescued. Maybe he had managed to escape and survive.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the headline written in a natural clear and informative style
FAQs The Vanished Village Kathmandu Hospital Search
1 What does the headline Their entire village has vanished actually mean
It means that a specific village likely in a remote mountainous area of Nepal has been completely destroyed or buriedmost likely by a landslide or avalanche The physical structures and landmarks are gone making it look as if the village simply disappeared from the map
2 Why is the search happening at a hospital in Kathmandu
Kathmandu is the capital and has the major trauma and specialized hospitals in Nepal When a disaster happens in a remote area critically injured survivors are airlifted directly to Kathmandu for advanced medical care The search at the hospital refers to medical teams trying to identify patients match them with missing person reports and triage the influx of casualties
3 What kind of disaster could cause a whole village to vanish
The most common causes are massive landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains or a glacial lake outburst flood In the high Himalayas earthquakes can also trigger avalanches that bury entire settlements under tons of rock and ice
4 How do rescue teams find survivors if the village is buried
They use a combination of methods sniffer dogs to detect human scent thermal imaging drones to detect body heat and acoustic listening devices to pick up sounds from people trapped under debris They also rely on local knowledge of where homes and community shelters were located
5 I heard they are looking for missing persons How do they know who is missing if the village is gone
Before the disaster local authorities and family members had records of who lived there After the event they use a missing persons list compiled from calls from relatives who couldnt reach their loved ones combined with local census data and school attendance records
6 Why is it so difficult to get rescue teams to the village
These villages are often in extremely remote highaltitude locations with no road access The only way in is by helicopter and bad weather low clouds and the risk of further landslides often ground the helicopters for days delaying the search
7 What are the main challenges doctors in Kathmandu are facing right now
The main challenges are dealing with severe trauma
