After Nepal's Glacial Flood, Survivors Return to Betrawati and Find Only Grey Silt

BETRAWATI, Nepal/DEVIGHAT, Nepal, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Anusa Thapa Magar rushed home from her job in the Maldives after hearing about Nepal's devastating floods, hoping that her beloved grandmother was one of those who survived.

She headed for the family's two-storey house in the small town of Betrawati.

But there was no house, and no Betrawati.

Those who escaped last month's disaster, when a torrent of mud and rocks swept across the Nepal-China border area, have been returning to see what they can recover. In some cases, all they have found is a flat expanse of grey silt.

Standing on the hardened mud, the 23-year-old Magar wondered whether her grandmother, who could barely walk, was beneath the ground. "Aama" — mother, in Nepalese — was last seen resting on her bed.

"If my house is buried underneath, that means my Aama is still here underneath too, right?" said Magar.

Each day, scores of survivors sheltering in clusters of tents on a hillside above the site of Betrawati walk the half a kilometre (500 yards) to wander across the wasteland that was once their town, searching for traces of homes, shops and loved ones swallowed by the floods.

There are 5,130 people still reported missing on the Nepal side of the border after the flood caused by a glacial collapse that swept down the mountains, killing at least 1,386 people. The authorities continue to search for survivors, but it has been days since anyone has been found alive.

A TRAIL OF PANIC

The highway linking Bidur to Betrawati has been replaced by a thick layer of mud deposited by the flood-swollen river.

Reaching Betrawati now requires climbing a steep hillside, traversing a narrow ridge and then descending into what had been a bustling settlement.

Along the way lie abandoned shoes and slippers, silent evidence of the panic that unfolded as people scrambled to escape the torrent of water, mud and rock. A deserted school building stands half-buried in debris. Further up the trail, children's shoes, school ties, and backpacks are scattered across the mud.

The floodwaters surged downstream with such force that they slammed into the base of a hill before rebounding across the valley, sweeping away everything in their path.

Betrawati residents said warnings about the approaching flood began circulating minutes before it arrived, as friends and relatives upstream phoned to alert them. But few grasped the speed or scale of what was coming.

Garment business owner Kalpana Thapa Magar, 43, recalled receiving a call from a friend, telling her: "Run! Run!"

"I just ran. When I looked back, everything was gone, even the people who had been running behind me,” she said.

In Devighat, downstream, partial shells of houses still stand. Residents have been salvaging what belongings they can, though many say they will have no reason to return again.

Madhav Ghimire, 42, carries the keys to the six-room house he shared with Ambika Aryal, 38, but the landscape has changed so dramatically that they can no longer identify where it stood.

"Though I lost everything, I have still carried the keys of my home. It gives me a sense that I have everything," he said.

LOST EVERYTHING

For many families in the region, it was not the first disaster they had endured. Nearly 9,000 people were killed in Nepal's 2015 earthquake.

Teacher Sita Thapa Magar, 45, Kalpana's older sister, said the earthquake had brought hardship and loss, but families had at least been able to salvage belongings and rebuild on their land. This time, the two houses she owned with her husband had been swept away and their farmland buried under debris.

"This time, we have lost everything," she said.

Shanti Dangol, 61, stood on a single broken tile, the only visible trace of her home, holding a photograph of the three-storey lodge that once stood there. 

She described Betrawati as a once-thriving town that catered to pilgrims and trekkers and had grown more prosperous in recent years as families built larger homes, rented rooms and invested in their children's education.

"Economically, people here had started doing well. Now, nothing remains," she said.

(Photography and reporting by Adnan Abidi and Tyrone Siu; Addtional reporting by Sahana Bajracharya and Thomas Suen; Writing by Aftab Ahmed; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)