BIDUR, Nepal — The overwhelming stench of death is crushing hopes that more survivors will be found in this Nepalese town devastated by last week’s catastrophic floods.
Workers in white hazmat suits unload bodies from a stream of ambulances in Bidur, a town in Nepal’s Nuwakot district on Tuesday. They place the wrapped bodies onto blue tarp in a cordoned off area.
Helicopters, both military and civilian aircraft that in better days would be used for commercial tours, take off packed with aid before returning with survivors in need of medical care.
Kalpana Shrestha, a nurse who works in capital Kathmandu, is desperate. Ten members of her family are missing — her two sisters and their children — are missing.
“I have shared their photos with journalists, on social media and YouTube but I have not got any response at all,” she said speaking with NBC News in Kathmandu. She added that her loved ones disappeared in Betrawati, a town some 60 miles from the capital that was obliterated in the flooding.
“I have posted so much that my fingers started shaking and trembling,” said Shrestha, 35. “My mind has stopped working. But even so, we have not stopped posting.”
More than 1,000 have been declared dead in Nepal after last week’s devastating floods, according to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. Over 3,915 others are still missing, including at least 583 foreign nationals. In Tibet, at least 16 people were killed and 546 are missing, according to CGTN, China’s English-language satellite news channel.
At least 80 Americans are among the missing in Nepal.
More than 10,000 people have been rescued so far, including 252 foreign nationals, the United Nations says.
The disaster, which was triggered by a glacier collapse and landslide on Nepal’s border with China, is now considered Nepal’s deadliest natural disaster since the April 2015 earthquake that killed around 9,000 people in Nepal.
Shrestha said she felt that the government was “not doing enough work to search and rescue to locate” her family. She also noted that access to her village was still difficult after the floods.
“Our brothers did try but failed to reach them and had to return home,” she said. “The road is gone, there is no access at all.”
Access remains the single biggest obstacle to response efforts, with roads passable only as far as Nuwakot and some sections of highway linking Kathmandu to the hardest areas still completely blocked, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
And the bodies that have been recovered pose a huge challenge to authorities, who are using at least 21 hospitals in a string of districts to store remains, according to Nepal’s disaster agency. In some cases, bodies are being buried to prevent any risk of infection, with hopes they will be later identified so the remains can be returned to loved ones.
Speaking with NBC News in Pokhara, Nabin Karki, a superintendent of police, said authorities were collecting DNA samples and display photos of the bodies found so in hopes that family members might be able to identify them.
Relatives of those missing can provide blood samples for DNA testing, he said, and if a match is found the body can be taken from the burial site and handed over to the family for a funeral.
Janis Mackey Frayer and Dawn Liu reported from Bidur, Nepal. Michael Fiorentino and Surendra Phuyal reported from Kathmandu, Nepal. Sunil Pandey reported from Pokhara, Nepal.
