Five Australians Were Having Breakfast. Then Came a Wall of Water
Five Australians were eating breakfast at Nepal’s Kailash Hotel when catastrophic flash floods swept the building away. Tour operator Sagar Pandey recounts the final moments, as 43 Australians remain missing and the death toll climbs past 900.
PEOPLE & COMMUNITY
The Moment the Flood Struck
Dhading/Sydney: Five missing Australians were eating breakfast in a six-storey Nepalese hotel when it was hit by catastrophic flooding last week, the founder of the US-based tour company leading their group has revealed.
Sagar Pandey, chief executive of Himalayan Glacier Adventure and Travel Company, said the travellers were starting their day at the Kailash Hotel, downriver from the Gyirong Port crossing on the Nepal–China border, when flash flooding smashed the hotel and its surrounds on Wednesday.
“Five were in that hotel, and 10 were on the road,” Pandey said.
Footage of the township captured hours after the flooding shows brown sludge blanketing the riverbanks where several buildings once stood. Structures higher up the hill remained upright, having escaped the worst of the disaster, which has killed at least 900 people and left more than 4,700 missing in Nepal and Tibet.
This masthead is working to determine the identities of the five Australians inside the hotel at the time of the floods.
The Muralitharan Family: Last Words Before Breakfast
Brothers Aarush, 11, and Ashwin Muralitharan, 14, were the youngest Australians to embark on the Himalayan Glacier tour, along with their parents, Chandrasekaran and Shylaja, who lived in Cherrybrook in Sydney’s north-west.
Relatives said the Muralitharan family’s last known location was the Kailash Hotel and that their final communication with family was at 6.47am, when they mentioned they were going to have breakfast and then head to immigration.
The family is among 43 Australians who remain missing, up from a previous estimate of 42.
Michael Keats: First Australian Declared Dead
The news of the five breakfasting Australians came as an Australian man was declared dead by his grieving family, who described his loss as “heartbreaking and overwhelming”.
Michael Keats, from the NSW South Coast, was described by his partner, Emily Boyd, as “an incredibly important part” of her family.
“The loss has changed everything for my son and me,” Boyd said on fundraising platform GoFundMe on Monday night. “We are trying to navigate the shock and grief of losing someone we love deeply while also suddenly having to face life without the person who was such an important part of our family and our household.”
Keats was understood to be returning from a journey to Mount Kailash in Tibet, and had reached the border crossing into Nepal when the floods struck.
In a Facebook post, Keats, who completed a master’s of teaching in 2017, had described himself as a “teacher, a guide, a nature lover, and a mystic at heart”.
It’s understood he was a follower of Indian spiritual leader Jagadish Vasudev, known as Sadhguru, and had been dreaming for years of making the trek to Mount Kailash – regarded as a holy place by several religions.
“He showed up for so many people in so many ways,” Boyd wrote in a post on Instagram. “A heart of pure gold. You are and always will be our greatest gift. So kind, so loving, so playful, helpful and generous.”
“Our lives became so much brighter, funner, beautiful and grounded once Mikey graced us with his presence,” Boyd wrote.
Vasudev said on Thursday that groups of travellers including Keats and 10 other Australians were waiting at a border checkpoint at Gyirong when the flash flood destroyed a building they were believed to be inside.
Renee Spry: On Pilgrimage When Disaster Struck
Queensland woman Renee Spry was returning from a pilgrimage to the Tibetan Mount Kailash when disaster struck, her family has said.
Spry’s last known movement was through the Gyirong Port border crossing moments before the flood, according to her sister, Clair.
Spry’s partner, Shaun, and their two daughters intend to travel to the region to try to find her. “We continue to pray for her, the Nepalese people and those also still to return to the safety of their homes and families,” Clair said.
Government Response: “We Haven’t Given Up Hope”
Foreign Affairs and Trade Assistant Minister Matt Thistlethwaite confirmed the number of missing Australians as the federal government committed another $3 million to Nepal’s recovery effort.
“We haven’t given up hope that we can rescue those Australians safe and well,” Thistlethwaite told ABC News Breakfast. “We’re doing everything we can, working around the clock to try to locate those missing Australians.”
The Australian Defence Force is expected to transport the supplies to Nepal in the coming days.smh+1
“It takes our contribution to over $8 million, but we stand ready to help the Nepalese government as they try to rescue as many people as possible,” Thistlethwaite said.
Ongoing Flood Warnings and Rescue Challenges
The news came as authorities in Nepal warned of possible fresh flooding and urged residents in flood-affected districts to remain on high alert after water levels rose in the Bhote Koshi River.
Flood warning notices were sent to people’s phones on Sunday as rescue crews worked to clear a major highway connecting Kathmandu to one of the worst-hit areas.
The latest warnings came after Chinese authorities informed their Nepalese counterparts of increased water flow upstream, according to Dharam Raj Uprety, chief executive of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua, citing the country’s water resources ministry, said a new lake that formed after Wednesday’s floods high in the mountains had largely drained.
But Xinhua said the ministry had warned that a crater located 5.6 kilometres upstream, which held an estimated 1.4 million cubic metres of water, still posed some risk and required close monitoring.
Nepal’s disaster agency said on Monday the death toll had climbed to 903 with 4,247 missing, while Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing on the Tibetan side of the border.
Miracles Amid the Destruction: Manisha and the 900 Schoolchildren
The missing include hundreds of people from more than a dozen countries who were in the region to work, visit the mountains or make a pilgrimage to a sacred peak. On Sunday, Chinese state media said 261 foreigners were missing in Tibet, including more than 100 Nepalese and others from around the world.
However, there were pockets of good news, with five-year-old Manisha reunited with her parents after being pulled from the rubble on Friday.
Rescue workers looking for survivors near Syabrubesi in Rasuwa district had thought they could hear a cat stuck under the rubble. Instead, they found Manisha alive but barely responsive and were able to free her after a two-hour operation. She is in a stable condition in hospital.
In Nuwakot, the head teacher of a Nepalese school was able to evacuate about 900 students to safety just moments before the flood hit.
“If we had made the decision 10 minutes later, all of us, including the students and me, would not be able to speak to you today,” Rajendra Dawadi, who leads the Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School, told the BBC.
At another school, in Dhading, a group of schoolchildren survived when they left their classroom for lunch, while others escaped because teachers told them to evacuate quickly.
“The teachers said, ‘there is a flood, and you should leave bags and tiffins’,” said Lakshmi Shrestha, the mother of a student attending the school. “That’s how they managed to survive.”
Residents Return to Ruined Homes
In Dhading, one of the worst-hit regions in Nepal, some residents began returning to ruined homes to see what could be salvaged.
They sat in homes with walls washed away by the floods, shovelling sludge-like mud and rubble off balconies or window frames. Others scanned the ground for items they could pick out of the mud and rinse off. One man had returned for his chickens, which he found alive. He tied them up and put them in the cabin of his truck.
“Everything is finished. Nothing is left. Not even our home,” Sharmila Tamang, a Dhading resident who was trying to salvage items from her home, told The Associated Press.
At a key power plant that was severely damaged by the floods, workers started inspecting the facilities to survey the destruction, even as rescuers worked to reach hundreds of people believed to be stuck inside blocked hydropower project tunnels across the region.
Mohan Kumar Dangi, president of the Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal, or IPPAN, said the floods damaged at least 12 hydropower projects across Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts and about 900 people were missing from the project sites.
Rescue efforts are focused on people trapped in the gigantic tunnels built for controlling the waterflow to produce hydropower.
“Sometimes They Say a Flood Is Coming, Then We Have to Run Again”
Residents of flood-hit villages said they were struggling to make sense of near-constant alarms they had received since the initial floods.
“Sometimes they say a flood is coming, then we have to run again to higher ground, even at night. There is also rain,” said Govind Shreshta, a resident. “It’s really difficult for me. I have a 72-year-old father and 70-year-old mum. I must carry them and I am exhausted. It’s going on like this for those who are still alive.”
Large concrete and smaller suspension bridges were destroyed, leaving communities on the other side of the river with less easy access.
“Those who are there are now stuck there. Those who are here are stuck here. It’s going to be very difficult,” said Sattan Singh Tamang, 47, who was working near a bridge when Wednesday’s floods came.
Climate Change and the Himalayan Catastrophe
Wednesday’s flash floods started after a glacial collapse high in the Himalayan region. Scientists who studied satellite images said bedrock underneath a glacier high in the Himalayan region had collapsed, taking part of the glacier with it. The rockfall was so extreme that it registered as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.
The rocks and melted water then swelled the rivers in the valleys below, causing a torrent of water that swept buildings, bridges and earth downstream in Tibet and Nepal.
Nepal’s foreign minister called for a global response to climate change, saying Nepal was bearing a disproportionate share of its impact.
“Despite having only 0.1 per cent contribution to the global emissions, people of Nepal have become major victims of climate change,” Shisir Khanal said on Saturday.
Scientists have said it is too early to draw a direct connection between global warming and Wednesday’s catastrophe. However, they said that as Earth’s temperature rose due to human activities such as burning oil, gas, and coal, the likelihood of such disasters increased, especially in the Himalayan mountains, which were warming considerably faster than many other parts of the world.
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