Families searching for loved ones are crowding a hospital in Nepal’s capital as deadly flooding in the country’s north enters its third day. At Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, police say more than 200 relatives of missing people come through the doors each day, while soldiers and officers collect names and details of those still unaccounted for.
The disaster has left a combined death and missing count that has topped 3,000, according to the article. Photos of unidentified bodies recovered from the flood zone cover an exterior hospital wall, and relatives study each face in hopes of finding someone they know.
One 55-year-old man, Denzing Sherpa, said he had visited the hospital twice looking for his two younger brothers and would at least be relieved if their bodies were recovered so the family could hold funeral rites. Another man, 37-year-old Raju Jodari, left an herbal bracelet intended for an uncle near the hospital wall, only to see it disappear overnight in the rain. A 29-year-old, Raswa Aan, said he had lost contact with his father, who lived downstream near the river, and was left shaken by the possibility that his body might not be found for a very long time, or at all.
The smell of cremation was heavy near the grounds by the road from Kathmandu airport to the hospital, where funeral pyres have increased since the floods. On flights carrying Nepalis returning from abroad, the article says, the cabin remained silent throughout the journey as the scale of the tragedy sank in.
