Nepal Flood Survivors Grapple with Devastation and Uncertain Futures

In two brief, separate statements, they articulated the despair shared by countless Nepalis who watched lives built over decades vanish in seconds.

“Everything is gone,” said Anju Shakya, a shopkeeper.

Anushka Tamang, a janitor, added, “I don’t know what to do next.”

The torrential mudslide that struck Wednesday, burying or sweeping away loved ones, homes, businesses, and schools, has left a multitude of people confronting the same urgent questions: What will I eat? Where will I sleep? What can I salvage? And what happens after that?

Ms. Tamang, 29, navigated a treacherous, improvised path to reach the home she had fled in Devighat, a town in central Nepal. She crossed a fallen tree trunk, a sheet of roofing tin, and the concrete foundation of a ruined house, carefully avoiding quicksand and wading through mud in bare feet.

Inside her partially buried home, she retrieved a silver suitcase—normally tucked away and holding her formal saris—lodged in a doorway and caked in mud but intact. She found some of her six-year-old daughter’s clothes, spared because they hung from the ceiling above the four-foot-deep sludge. She also located her cooking gas cylinders—one empty, one partially full—each potentially worth about $14.

With her brother’s help, she hauled the recovered items to a nearby school that doubled as her daughter’s classroom and her own workplace. She intends to shelter there with her belongings for a few days, though how they will survive beyond the immediate crisis remains an open question.

Authorities have confirmed approximately 500 deaths, with nearly 2,000 people reported missing—figures expected to climb given the scale of the catastrophe. Early estimates project the disaster will cost the tourism-dependent economy billions of dollars, while restoring roads, bridges, and power lines will require hundreds of millions more.

Rescued residents have been transported to hospitals and relief camps, where the government and aid organizations have begun erecting temporary shelters and distributing meals.

Currently, the top priorities are delivering food and water and providing temporary shelter, said Hiralal Tamrakar, program director for Good Neighbors Nepal. The aid group is coordinating with local authorities in Bidur, in the hard-hit Nuwakot district. Survivors are urgently requesting food, clothing, shelter, blankets, and other basic necessities, he noted.

Yet as survivors mourn missing friends and family and come to terms with the loss of property and valuables, the path to rebuilding their lives remains undefined.

“Later on, the government will make the provision, the plan to settle them,” Mr. Tamrakar said.

Until two days ago, Ms. Shakya, 50, operated a jewelry store in Trishuli Bazaar, a busy market in Bidur along the Trishuli River. She said years of effort had secured a comfortable life for her family, with promising prospects for the future.

For over two decades, she lived in a three-story home with her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. The family owned two cars and a motorcycle.

She estimated the family had accumulated roughly 3.5 kilograms of gold, valued at approximately $500,000, intended to fund her grandson’s education.

That carefully cultivated life disappeared when mud crashed through the shop walls and surged toward her home.

Ms. Shakya said family members attempted to seal windows and doors against the slurry, but were forced to flee within minutes. They scrambled up a hillside to escape the deadly current and remained stranded there for two days until army personnel reached them.

The house and vehicles are gone. The shop is gone. The gold is gone.

Sitting on a cot while army doctors treated a knee she sprained during the escape, Ms. Shakya wore a borrowed T-shirt and a bandage. She said she cannot yet process her future or determine her next steps.

She and her family plan to stay with relatives in Kathmandu, the capital, until they can decide how to begin reconstructing their lives.

“My eyes keep welling up thinking about the wealth we’ve lost,” she said.

“You can’t build a gold shop from scratch,” Ms. Shakya added, still in disbelief that at her age she must start over. “God has taken what he has given us.”

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