I knew I was going to die: Eyewitnesses recall the terror of Nepal’s flash floods

At first, Dipak Tamang thought the ground was shaking. Then he saw a wall of water, mud and stones racing towards the houses along the Bhotekoshi river in Timure market, and realised there was nowhere to go but up.

Survivors of the floods have described scenes of extraordinary terror — desperate climbs towards higher ground, homes collapsing around them and people being swept away as torrents of water, mud and debris tore through towns and villages, washing away everything on its way, on Wednesday. The death toll crossed 650 on Saturday, while more than 2,400 people remained missing. Nearly 2,500 people were evacuated as rescue teams raced against time amid intermittent rainfall in the flood-affected regions.

For some, survival came down to a desperate race uphill. Others watched helplessly as friends and loved ones were swept away.

People who reached the affected areas later found markets buried in mud and families searching for missing relatives. Tamang, a resident of neighbouring Sindhupal district, was in Timure, a town on the Nepal-Tibet border, when the flash flood struck.

“When I came out of the house and ran upward towards the hill, few houses had already collapsed due to the powerful flood,” he recalled, according to a report by Nepali news portal Onlinekhabar. “There was not much choice for me. Behind me was the flood and in front of me was a wall-like hill,” Tamang said. He ran towards the slope, struggling to climb what seemed like a wall. He fell several times, grabbing thorny bushes and stinging nettles to pull himself higher. “It was my last race between life and death,” he said.

People were running in different directions as the flood surged below them. Each time he fell, Tamang thought it might be the last moment of his life.

Eventually, he reached the top of the hill, from where he saw people being swept away by the flood. Among them were his friends. “I could do nothing when my friends were swept away by the wave before my eyes,” he recalled. Tamang eventually found an old go-down used for storing wood in the forest, where dozens of other people who had managed to save themselves had also taken refuge. He spent the night there without a bed as rain continued to fall, waiting for rescuers. He was rescued about 24 hours later.

For photojournalist Amul Thapa, who reached Trishuli shortly after the flood, the devastation was almost impossible to comprehend.

Writing about his visit in Nepali daily Naya Patrika, Thapa said he began his journey from Kathmandu around 10 am, about an hour after the incident, and reached Trishuli market a couple of hours later.