This is the terrifying moment two children narrowly escape a devastating mudslide in Nepal after a woman heroically drags them out of the path.
Shocking footage shows the woman grabbing the two children near a road and pulling them uphill, just before a torrent of mud and water rushes through the street and destroys a house.
Fortunately, the children and other spectators manage to get to safety. It is unclear whether the children are related to the woman.
The images emerged as the Himalayan country continues to face devastation after an unprecedented deluge of ice, rocks, mud and debris on the Nepal-Tibet border killed more than 900 people, while 4,250 remain missing.
Hundreds of bodies, many unidentified, were buried in shallow graves as they began to decompose in the humid weather in the Himalayan country’s plains after being swept off the mountains by the torrent on Wednesday.
Rescuers struggled through mud and debris for a sixth day on Monday as the number of missing people rose to almost 5,000 since tsunami-like glacial floods swept down from the China-Nepal border, creating an “unimaginable” disaster.
Rescue teams are racing against time in treacherous conditions to free dozens of hydropower workers believed to be trapped in tunnels. They dig, drill and blast through the rubble, a non-stop effort supported by teams from China, India and South Korea.
So far, three dead bodies have been recovered from two tunnels and teams have found routes blocked by mud.
Shocking footage shows the woman grabbing the two children near a road and pulling them uphill, just before a torrent of mud and water rushes through the street
Fortunately, the children and other spectators manage to get to safety
The Himalayan country continues to face devastation after an unprecedented deluge of ice, rocks, mud and debris on the Nepal-Tibet border killed more than 900 people
Amid the horror, there was some hope; A six-year-old girl who was pulled from the mud four days after the disaster on Friday was reunited with her parents after police found her crying for her mother.
“Her body was stuck in the mud, but her head was out,” said Netra Bahadur Karki, spokesperson for the Nepal Armed Police.
“She is out of danger and recovering in hospital and has been reunited with her family.”
The disaster was caused by a collapse of glaciers, according to the US Geological Survey. While the exact cause of that collapse is unclear, climate change is causing glaciers worldwide to melt, increasing the risk of such disasters.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said: “The people of Nepal are one of the biggest victims of the changing climate and its impact.”
Scientists say the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range, are melting faster as global temperatures rise.
The aid needs are enormous. Entire communities have been wiped out, leaving families homeless by heavy rain or sheltered in temporary facilities.
“This is an unfolding disaster,” said U.N. Children’s Fund official Abiodun Banire, adding that the needs of the tens of thousands affected were enormous.
Roads have been washed away, power stations destroyed and dozens of bridges destroyed.
“We continue to work on search, rescue and relief operations,” Karki said on Monday, as communications slowly improved. Police initially had to use drones to deliver messages to cut-off areas.
“Rescue teams have now reached most areas, by road or helicopter,” he added.
With morgues overflowing with the dead, Nepal has started burying some of the hundreds of bodies recovered after DNA samples were taken so that families can retrieve them later.
Kathmandu has appealed for international support, saying Nepal needs “more than a thousand” freezers to store bodies.
Distraught families, desperate for news of missing relatives, are watching images of bodies on screens in community centers in a bid to identify the dead.
Shobha Adhikary, in the southern Nepalese city of Bharatpur, told a local coordinator that she believed one image showed her childhood best friend.
“He certainly looks like him,” she said, showing a photo of a smiling middle-aged man.
“My husband and I are best friends with Rajkumar and his wife Geeta,” she said. Geeta has also been missing since Wednesday.
Nepal’s missing list includes 592 foreigners, including tourists who came to trek in the apparently serene mountains and Hindu pilgrims seeking spiritual peace at Tibet’s holy Mount Kailash.
Nepal Army rescuers said Monday that their teams were “cleaning water, mud and sediment” as they dug to reach about 100 workers the government believes are living in multiple tunnels.
They are among 933 hydropower plant workers missing in Nepal. Workers who managed to escape described horrific scenes when the disaster struck.
Nepalese army personnel rescue a man after deadly floods and mudslides
Rescue workers take part in a rescue operation near the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project
Workers set up a mobile communications base station in a mudslide-affected area in Gyirong province
At the Upper Trishuli 3A site, rescuers broke into the upper part of a mud-flooded tunnel, pumped air in and then used drills and excavators to dig down.
“When members of the team descended with ropes and shouted to those inside, there was no response,” Shah said, adding that the rescue operation continued.
Kulman Gsising, former head of many of the hydropower projects who has just returned from the scene to help coordinate the rescue operation, told the Daily Mail:
“It’s impossible to say how long the workers will be able to survive because we simply don’t know the condition of the tunnels.
‘We estimate there are 300 workers in six to eight tunnels. If there is enough oxygen and food, they may be fine for several weeks. But from what I’ve seen so far, that’s not the case.
“There was one tunnel that was reached and it was completely filled with water and mud, so we couldn’t tell if there were workers inside. For another, after we had created an opening, there was no response when we called.’
Mr Gsising, who previously served as Nepal’s energy minister, said: ‘The entire area has been devastated and many villages and hydropower projects have been wiped off the face of the earth. I only got back to Kathmandu yesterday and will return very soon.
‘We have to find our people as quickly as possible. This is a desperate race against time.”
The Nepal Electricity Authority said 11 hydropower plants and one solar power plant, with a combined capacity of 431.1 megawatts – about 10 percent of the country’s installed electricity generation capacity – were no longer operating.
Another 15 power projects under construction, with a planned capacity of 470 megawatts, were damaged.
Emotional scenes have unfolded outside the Nepal Electricity Authority’s headquarters in Kathmandu, where relatives of workers believed to be trapped have gathered to await news about them.
Sita Pandey, whose husband Jiblal was working in one of the tunnels, told local media: “I still have 50 percent hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside.”
She revealed she last spoke to him on Wednesday morning, hours before the flood hit.
Desperately hoping he will be found soon, she added: ‘We can understand that the rescue operation is technically complex. But we cannot accept delays. Our people are in there. Every second counts for us.’
In China, Tibet is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists and the Chinese authorities are the only source of information.
More than 2,000 personnel are part of the rescue operations there, but they have faced significant challenges.
Rescuers trying to reach the epicenter of the disaster, the port of Gyirong, advanced only 285 meters, according to state media on Sunday.
The glacier collapse caused the formation of huge lakes that were dammed by unstable debris, posing a further threat to rescue teams.
China has said 16 people have been killed in Tibet, while 546 people are missing.
