A British man has revealed the last conversation he had with his newlywed wife before she went missing in the Nepal flash floods. Pramod Poudel last spoke to his new spouse, Samitra, on Wednesday before a glacier collapsed near the border with China’s autonomous province of Tibet.
Last words before the disaster
Pramod, 34, who lives in East Sussex, has heard nothing since from Sumitra, 25, who was staying with his family in Sole, a village severely impacted by the disaster. He said he last spoke to his wife over the phone at 4.15pm on Wednesday – hours before the glacier collapsed – when she told him: ‘How are you? I love you so much’.
The truck driver has since travelled to Nepal hoping to find his wife, as well as his mother, Tulisa 52, brother Pardip, 31, and uncle, Madhav, 64, who are also missing.
Devastation in the village
‘I’m very hopeful of finding them but I’m also praying to God’, he told the Sun. But he added that 90% of people and homes in the area had been washed away by the flood and that there was very little left of the village where his relatives had lived.
The death toll in Nepal has risen above 700, with more than 2,400 people still unaccounted for. Chinese authorities confirmed that 546 people were missing in Tibet, of which 261 were foreign nationals. These include 15 British citizens, as well 18 Americans and 49 nationals from neighbouring India.
UK response and missing nationals
The UK has sent £5,000,000 in humanitarian relief as well as teams to assist the rescue and recovery efforts. In total, 33 British nationals are missing across the region. These include two teenagers, a 13-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. Others with links to the UK who are missing include an NHS nurse, a Hindu priest from south London who was leading a tour in the region and an 18-year-old from Surrey who had recently finished his A-Levels.
Mother-of-two Geetha Reddy is among those missing. Her husband, from London, said he had not heard from his wife since the flooding hit and that their two girls, 12 and 14, still refusing to believe it. He said: ‘We’re not sure what to do. I have two little girls, and their schools are starting next week. The kids still don’t believe it. They think she’s stuck in the flood and that she’ll come back. They think she’s stuck somewhere and there’s no mobile network.’
Rescue efforts and ongoing risks
Residents have been evacuated from the banks of the Trishuli River, where fresh rainfall caused water levels to rise, prompting rescuers to seek higher ground. Foreign experts are now working to open tunnels blocked off by the flooding. A lake which formed on Thursday prompted new fears of further flooding but have since drained. But drones have since detected another pool of water in the Himalayas, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said.
Some 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the natural disaster, the Red Cross estimated. Rescuers have continued to work around the clock in challenging conditions to locate survivors among the devastation. Among those pulled from the mud was a 97-year-old woman now recovering in hospital. Guna Maya Bohara was rescued from the rubble of her care home with was destroyed in the flood. Her great-nephew Dipak said she looked like a ‘warrior’ who had returned home from battle as she was carried to safety by emergency workers.
