Nepali Worker Survives Flash Flood by Clinging to Mango Tree in China

Bibek Kumal (24) was digging a toilet pit outside a newly built house in Bidur, downstream from the worst-hit Rasuwa district near Nepal's Himalayan border with China's Tibet, when he heard a hissing sound. His four co-workers, standing above the 1.5-metre-deep pit, shouted at him to get out and run. By the time he scrambled out, they had already fled.

"I started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake, Kumal said from his bed at Kathmandu's National Trauma Centre, his brother Dinesh sitting beside him. The torrent swept him downstream amid mud and debris, but "luckily I was stuck up in a mango tree, he said.

"Had there been no mango tree, I would have been washed away to death." Authorities said on Thursday that about 1,500 people are missing across Nepal and China's Tibet after a wall of mud and rock collapsed into a Himalayan river, causing the flash floods. Three others injured in the flood were being treated alongside Kumal, as more people were transported to the capital Kathmandu. Outside the hospital, well-wishers, friends and onlookers crowded the small compound of the trauma centre.

The flood devastated settlements and infrastructure downstream. Security footage captured on the Chinese side of the border showed many people fleeing before a wall of rock, mud and water destroyed buildings and vehicles and took many lives. Kumal said as he clung to the mango tree, he watched the house where he had been working disappear.

Police later reached him and pulled him to safety. He suffered injuries to his right leg after being struck first by the water and then by a large stone. His own home, located elsewhere, escaped damage, he said.

Mostly mountainous Nepal experiences deadly floods and landslides every monsoon season and is prone to other natural disasters. As a teenager, Kumal lived through the devastating 2015 earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people. In the hospital bed opposite him, 11-year-old Rihana Lamichhane narrowly escaped.

"I was at school. They closed the school because of this and asked us to go home," she said. "As I was crossing the river, suddenly flood water came gushing down. She suffered injuries to her chest and leg but said: "I am happy to be safe.