Nepali families held symbolic funeral ceremonies to “liberate the souls” of loved ones missing since fatal flash floods swept away their villages and homes in the Himalayan region a week ago. Emergency teams have retrieved more than 1,000 bodies, and nearly 4,500 people are missing after the gigantic wave of freezing water, rocks and debris triggered by a high-altitude glacial collapse roared down the China-Nepal border on August 26.
After days of searching shelters and mortuaries, relatives of some of the missing lost hope and began conducting last rites. “We had to do this to set his soul free, so that he is at peace and happy wherever he is,” said Dolma Newar Tamang at a funeral for her husband.
A week on from the colossal disaster, Nepali rescuers remained hopeful about finding survivors, particularly in multiple tunnels of hydropower plants surrounding the region. As yet, rescuers have recovered only bodies from tunnels blocked by sludge, but teams were still digging, drilling and blasting through debris in the hopes of reaching survivors.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal announced that he still hoped some of the thousands missing could be alive. “Miracles do happen,” he told in an interview. “At this point, I do not want to give up hope completely.”
Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah added that the catastrophe was “a serious indication that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing alongside climate change”. “Climate change is a global contribution, and disaster response is also a global responsibility,” he added in a Facebook post. Scientists say the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range, are warming rapidly as global temperatures rise, accelerating glacier melt.
With mortuaries overflowing in Nepal, authorities have had to bury hundreds of unidentified bodies after DNA sampling. Nepal said 1,050 bodies had been recovered by Tuesday, while 3,916 people remained missing.
Source: Malay Mail
