In Nepal’s capital, search and rescue teams are working through devastated homes after monsoon floods subsided on Monday. These floods have claimed at least 192 lives across the country.
The heavy rainfall, the most intense in over two decades, has led to widespread devastation, including landslides that temporarily cut off Kathmandu from the rest of the country.
The monsoon season in South Asia, which lasts from June to September, often brings deadly floods and landslides, but experts suggest that climate change is exacerbating these events. Rescue operations are currently focused on saving stranded individuals, especially on highways affected by landslides, according to Rishi Ram Tiwari, a spokesman for Nepal’s home ministry.
“192 people have been reported dead, and another 31 are missing,” he added.
At least 35 of those killed were buried alive when earth from a landslide careened into vehicles on a highway south of Kathmandu, Nepal Police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki told AFP.
Rescuers in knee-high rubber boots, meanwhile, were using shovels to clear mud from the worst-hit riverside neighbourhoods around Kathmandu, many of them unauthorised slum settlements.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a Nepal-based think tank, said the disaster had been made worse by unplanned urban encroachment around the Bagmati River, which courses through the capital.
Nepal’s army said that more than 4,000 people had been rescued, with helicopters, motorboats and rafts used to bring stranded households to safety.
Bulldozers were being used to clear nearly two dozen sections of major highways leading into Kathmandu that had been blocked by debris.
Source: The News