Nepal flash flood leaves more than 2,500 people missing
A sudden flood on the Nepal-China border swept away an immigration building at Gyirong, with 77 Isha Foundation pilgrims still unaccounted for.
The flood and the missing
A flash flood has caused heavy destruction in Nepal, with more than 2,500 people still reported missing, according to AajTak.
Among them are 77 pilgrims travelling with the Isha Foundation, the spiritual organisation founded by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. The group included people from 19 countries.
Isha Foundation coordinator Maa Gambhiri said on Friday that there had been no information about the 77 missing pilgrims for the previous two days. She said rescue teams were at the site but nothing had come back yet, and that 77 families were waiting for answers.
Sadhguru's account of the group
Speaking at an event called 'In Solidarity With Nepal' in Kathmandu, Sadhguru said his Kailash yatra group had a habit of reaching the immigration centre first, and that he now wished they had been a little less disciplined.
He said group leader Praveen had phoned to say everyone reached the immigration centre at 9:05 am. The group had gone early because of confusion at the Tibet-Nepal border, where a delay could mean hours spent clearing immigration.
Sadhguru said the first pictures of the flood showed water and debris at a level of around 40 feet. In a post on his Facebook page on Wednesday, he said the group was at the immigration office in Gyirong when the flood struck and that the building and a large part of the town went under water. Three volunteers were also stranded at Timure on the Nepal side.
A survivor from Hooghly
Anjana Sanyal, a 69 year old retired schoolteacher from Bandopadhyay Para Street in Uttarpara, Hooghly district in West Bengal, reached Howrah early on Sunday by the Mithila Express after surviving the disaster.
She had travelled to Nepal with a Kolkata travel agency in a group of 17 people, hoping to visit Kailash Mansarovar. On 26 August their bus was heading from Kathmandu towards the Chinese immigration office when it stopped for about ten minutes so passengers could drink tea.
Sanyal told AajTak the weather was clear when they left Kathmandu. Further along the road she saw what looked like a cloud of smoke, then river water surging downwards. The driver learned of the sudden flood, turned the bus around and drove back towards Kathmandu.
Blame and the second flood risk
Sanyal said that had the driver gone on a little further, the bus could have been caught in a traffic jam with no room to turn. She holds China partly responsible, alleging that Nepal had about an hour and a half after the glacier broke and that earlier warning could have saved lives.
Navbharat Times reported that a barrier lake formed near the Nepal-China border has fully drained, as confirmed by China, removing the risk of a second flood.
Gambhiri said the organisation has contacted embassies in India, China and Nepal, and that Sadhguru wanted to travel to Gyirong, described as the centre of the disaster, but did not receive the necessary permission. The fate of the missing is not yet known.
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