Half-mast flags hung over Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal's government, on Monday as the country observed the 13th day since the glacier collapse that sent floodwaters tearing down the Bhotekoshi River on August 26, killing more than 1,300 people.
For many Nepalese families, the 13th day carries particular significance in Hindu mourning practices, when rites are traditionally performed for the dead.
But with about 5,000 people still unaccounted for, including roughly 900 hydropower workers, 500 of whom are still believed to be trapped in tunnels, thousands of families are still waiting to learn of their loved ones' fates.
Kishan Adhikari, a civil engineer on the Upper Trishuli 3B project in Nuwakot, was conducting a routine inspection on the morning the flood hit. Then someone told him a flood was moving downstream.
Kishan called a senior officer at the project and asked him to check. The call lasted only moments. Between 9:22 and 9:24 that morning, the flood wave reached the site – just two minutes after he made the call and roughly seven minutes after an alert had been issued for his district.
"Until then, we had absolutely no information about the flood," Kishan tells The New Arab. "I don't know what my mind thought or what decision I made, but I turned right. Maybe I survived because I turned right, but I couldn't save my other colleagues. I took off my boots and climbed straight up through the bushes."
From higher ground, he could see mudslides moving toward the project site and a handful of people who had escaped. The powerhouse, offices, staff quarters, and workers’ camp had disappeared beneath the floods.
"My daughter and mother were at the project quarters. I had brought them only a month earlier," he continues, breaking into tears. "I never thought something like this would happen."
To this day, neither his mother nor his daughter has been found, and Kishan has not left Kathmandu since.
He is still at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, where relatives of people who disappeared in Rasuwa and Nuwakot move between wards, lists, posters, and officials, looking for information.
Names on a list
The Ministry of Health said on September 1 that only about 4 percent of the roughly 900 bodies recovered by then had been named.
One of the people still looking is Rakesh Prasad. He has spent several days at the hospital looking for his younger brother, Umesh Prasad, who was working as a builder at Sherpa Hydropower in Rasuwa. The brothers are from Motihari, across the border in India.
Umesh last spoke to his wife at about 7:30 on the morning of the flood. He has four children: girls aged 12 and 10, and boys aged 7 and 5.
"I only have a list forwarded to me by a relative with my brother's name on it," Rakesh tells The New Arab. "I have no idea who prepared the list, what it represents or whether being on it means my brother is missing or dead."
Hospital officials say there are no details of Umesh in their records.
Sapana Sherpa, another concerned family member at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, travelled 260 kilometres from Khotang to Kathmandu in search of her uncle and his wife, who had lived in Rasuwa, where they ran a small hotel.
Her uncle, Dorchi Sherpa, had lived in Rasuwa for decades. Sapana had never met his wife, Sobita Tamang, and the family knew little about her. When she reached Rasuwa, villagers told her that her uncle and his children had been swept away. But there was still a possibility that Sobita had survived.
"We had never met her, so we contacted people in Rasuwa and asked them to send us photographs so we could identify her," she says.
"They said her name was also on a list, but nobody could tell us what kind of list it was."
At the hospital, however, her uncle’s wife's name did not appear on any of the official lists. With no other way to search for her, Sherpa pasted photographs of her uncle and aunt on the hospital walls.
"Thousands of photographs are pasted here by families looking for their loved ones," she adds. "I could only put up their photographs and hope that someone might recognise them or tell us what happened."
The trauma that follows
Four days after the flood, Aalok Mishra, a medical officer, travelled from Methinkot Hospital in Kavre to a temporary holding centre at Devighat in Nuwakot, one of several set up in the area.
The centre, operating from the Ayurvedic and Alternative Hospital, was treating 200 to 300 patients a day. Most had cuts, bruises and what appeared to be simple fractures. Others had suffered severe limb injuries or amputations. Those patients were stabilised at the centre before being taken by ambulance to Kathmandu, says Aalok.
"Wherever roads remained accessible to vehicles, the facilities were adequate," Aalok tells The New Arab. "From food and drinking water to medicines, the necessary supplies were available."
But across the Trishuli River from the centre, there were no roads. Supplies and patients on that side had to be moved by drone or helicopter, in operations jointly run by the Armed Police Force, the army and Nepal Police.
Patients were brought to Devighat for treatment and referred to Kathmandu if they needed care beyond what the centre could provide.
Medical teams rotated every three or four days. Aalok's team of four stayed for three days before another team took over, while an Armed Police Force medical team had been there since day one.
For Aalok, however, the flood's most difficult injuries were not always physical.
"Facing something we already know is one thing, but facing something sudden and shocking, which takes away a lifetime's earnings, the house and the entire family in a single moment, carried away by that flood," he shares.
He saw patients slip into depressive states, lose their appetites and withdraw from others, spending much of the day in profound sadness. His team and the Armed Police Force medical team provided counselling, while separate psychiatry teams rotated between the holding centres.
No early-warning systems
There was no early warning system when the glacier fell, according to glaciologist Rijan Bhakta Kayastha of Kathmandu University's Himalayan Cryosphere, Climate and Disaster Research Centre.
The terrain is extremely steep and uninhabited on both the Nepali and Chinese sides, with no trekking routes or trails, which is why the government did not install any systems there, Rijan tells The New Arab.
He estimated that the danger of further flooding has not completely subsided, as temporary ponds and lakes have formed in the affected area, raising the risk of sudden releases, debris flows, and secondary flooding. One of the ponds that has since formed at the collapse site. It has already burst twice.
"Nepal needs stronger monitoring and early-warning systems across its glaciated river basins, including round-the-clock monitoring during the monsoon," he explains.
The expert says the safest option would be to monitor Nepal's glaciated river basins from east to west, with personnel deployed around the clock during the monsoon months from June to September.
"The government has begun doing this, and the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology now has a camera-equipped system in place at the site," he adds.
But downstream, Nepal's existing flood-warning system did work. According to an NDRRMA report, the ice-rock avalanche struck at around 8:40 a.m., and the Bhotekoshi-Syafrubesi monitoring station stopped transmitting shortly afterwards.
By about 9:15 a.m., the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology had confirmed a major flood wave and issued warnings downstream.
NDRRMA said about 679,295 SMS alerts were sent. In Bidur, Nuwakot, the warning arrived early enough to help about 900 students escape uphill. But for some, the window was far narrower.
Kush Kumar Shrestha thought it was an ordinary flood. He walked toward the river to see what was happening, as his mother and others called after him: "The flood is coming. Don’t go over there!"
He heard a roar and then saw a section of the jungle-covered hillside give way, sweeping away the people standing on it.
"A sister was crying out, pull me, pull me, but I couldn't pull her, and when I looked back, she was gone," Kush tells The New Arab.
His uncle, just a step behind him, was swept away; his mother and sisters too. He is at the hospital now, looking for any news on any of his family members.
"I can't sleep, I can't eat, and whenever I close my eyes, that massive flood flashes right back," he shares.
He is at the hospital, still searching for any information about his family members.
Like other families, he has added their photographs to the walls, hoping that someone will recognise them or provide news of what happened.
The search has become increasingly difficult as the recovery of bodies has far outpaced their identification.
Meanwhile, the search for those still missing continues at 12 hydropower sites along the corridor, where the army and other rescue teams are digging through mud and debris in tunnels and damaged facilities.
Pratik Ghimire is a journalist based in Kathmandu, Nepal
This article was published in collaboration with Egab