Mukti Patel has huddled with family and friends at her parents’ Richmond, Virginia, home since her dad, sister and two other relatives went missing in the catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border.She knows the hotel they were staying in was swept away. But as she shared memories of them on Friday, she caught herself.“I shouldn’t talk in past tense yet,” she said. “We don’t know anything.”As rescuers continued pulling survivors from the mud, family members of some of the more than 2,000 people missing in the disaster were still holding out hope — however dim — that their loved ones survived.On a Zoom call Thursday night, some family members wanted to know if they could reach the site and whether a relative might be trapped inside an air pocket, said Sanket Pandey, managing director of Himalayan Glacier Adventure and Travel Company.
The tour group, which has an office in Baltimore, had organized a two-week excursion to the region with 40 guests and seven tour guides. All of them are now missing, Pandey said. Their families are desperate for any information.“It’s really difficult to have nothing,” he said. Patel’s family was in the Himalayan Glacier group when the floods struck on Wednesday, killing hundreds of people and leaving more than 2,000 missing. About 90 Americans are among those unaccounted for, according to the U.S. State Department.
