‘Swept away’: Nepal families search for relatives after devastating floods

Kathmandu, Nepal — It was a normal school day on Wednesday at Trishuli Secondary School in Nepal’s Nuwakot district when Gyan Deep Sapkota, a grade 11 student, suddenly heard his teachers yelling.Bidur, the city where the school is based, lies on the banks of the Trishuli river. A flash flood was barrelling down from upstream, where the river is known as the Bhotekoshi.“Our teachers were shouting for us to leave,” he recalled, speaking to Al Jazeera on the phone. “Some of us took a small old bridge and crossed to a safer area, while most of the students took up to the hills. Some of the students also had panic attacks and fainted.“It’s still giving me goosebumps and anxiety.”About 180 people have been killed and at least 1,400 people are missing in a vast region spanning Nepal and Tibet in China, after a suspected glacial lake outburst upstream in Tibet caused a massive flash flood that swept away entire settlements and even dams in the way. Among the missing are police, government employees, hydropower engineers and Nepalese, apart from hundreds of foreign tourists in Nepal.By late on Wednesday, Nepal Police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle said that search and rescue teams had reco...