KATHMANDU: At Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, photos and names of those lost after the devastating flood on Aug 26 are plastered on a wall: a makeshift missing persons’ bulletin board.They are the faces behind the tragedy.There are hundreds of posters put up here by family members of the missing: for locals, newlyweds, foreigners, members of the army and children. All of it is out of pure desperation for just a little bit of information about what might have happened to them.Twenty-nine-year-old Sahil Dewan is here looking for his brother, Samim, a cargo driver working near the Nepal-China border.
He sent his family a photo shortly before the flood struck and spoke to them on the phone. They have not heard from him since.“All of us have been trying to locate him. Our entire family has been praying and trying to find him,” Dewan said.Soon, he said, he plans to try and travel to the disaster zone himself, in a desperate final effort.More than a week after the flood, those still searching are confronting an increasingly grim reality: most of those being found are no longer alive, despite several extraordinary rescues offering flashes of hope.
Families look at photographs of people reported missing following the Aug 26 flood, displayed outside Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. (Photo: CNA/Jack Board)
