The family of 64-year-old Chandika Kumari Shrestha in Nepal had already begun funeral rituals, after the devastating floods swept through their area.
With no sign of her for days and widespread destruction around them, they believed she had died in the disaster and were mourning her loss.
On the 11th day, however, rescuers made an incredible discovery. They found her alive inside her collapsed home in the devastated Betrawati village.
Chandika had survived by being trapped in a narrow pocket of air amid water and mud, and was pulled out after more than a week buried beneath the debris.
“The four-storey house was swept (away) by the floods and the house was left in the middle of a quicksand. While walking around it, we heard a voice ‘save me,’” police officer Mahendra Darnal said.
In a rescue operation on Saturday lasting 45 minutes, Darnal and his team found Shrestha in a confined space and sent her to an army hospital.
“I was in touch with the family and they had started the 11-day mourning period,” Darnal said.Nepal Police and Armed Police Force (APF) members search the house of Chandika Kumari Shrestha, who was rescued alive on Saturday, for more survivors and victims of the deadly flash floods and mudslides, in Betrawati, Nuwakot district, Nepal
Shrestha was among the hundreds missing in Betrawati, an area among the hardest hit by the floods in Nepal and engulfed with white deposits compacted almost like concrete.
Crews continue to recover scores of dead bodies.
The town’s market and most residential buildings, some as tall as four storeys, were almost completely buried under debris left by a torrent that swept through the valley.
The disaster killed more than 1,300 people across Nepal. Thousands remain unaccounted for.
Rescue workers wearing hard hats were seen digging with shovels, while some were crawling through the gaps of collapsed buildings periodically blowing whistles to get the attention of anyone trapped and alive.
Five days earlier, 24 bodies were found in a decomposed state in Betrawati’s market area in a building that had contained a small shop, Darnal said.(Reuters/NAN)
