Emergency search: the devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet have claimed hundreds of lives, with thousands still missing – including a pilgrimage group fro Coulsdon
All 16 members of a Coulsdon Hindu temple pilgrimage are feared to be among the thousands who are missing, one week after floods in the mountains of the Tibet and Nepal border region devastated whole communities and buried entire villages under tons of mud.
The group from the Coulsdon Mandir included pilgrims aged between 18 and 65.
It was only yesterday that rescue workers first managed to reach some of the more remote Himalayan villages in Nepal, as efforts to locate victims have been hampered by continuing bad weather, while many roads have been washed away by the flood surge.
Among Nepal’s list of the missing are 592 foreigners, including tourists who had come for mountain trekking and Hindu pilgrims seeking spiritual peace at Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash.
Priest: Nabhi Nandan Das is among the 16 missing from the Coulsdon temple’s group. Other missing person notices appear below
Nabhi Nandan Das, who has been the priest at Coulsdon Mandir, on Chipstead Valley Road, for the past eight years, was leading a party of 16, mostly from Croydon
Das was last traced via WhatsApp at 3.57am (London time) on August 26.
The massive glacier collapse which propelled the wall of water, mud and debris downstream, obliterating the Gyirong Port border crossing in Tibet and flooding communities along the Trishuli River in Nepal, occurred at approximately 3.52am on August 26.
Balendra Shah, the Prime Minister of Nepal, said today that more than 11,000 people had been rescued across the region, and power and communication lines had been restored in some areas.
There is less news of those on the Tibet side of the border, which is controlled by China. The Coulsdon group had reached Tibet on their trek to Mount Kailash when the flood surge occurred.
According to official estimates, 4,400 people are still missing in Nepal and Tibet.
Today, police in the Tibet capital, Kathmandu, urged relatives of missing tourists to provide DNA samples to assist identification efforts.
There had been no news of the Coulsdon 16 by the time of publication.
Prayers were being held for the missing at Coulsdon Mandir tonight, just as they were last night.
“Every hour without news is heartbreaking,” Sachin Bagla, an elder at the Mandir, told the dozens of worried and grief-stricken attendees at last night’s prayers.
Prajwal Haldia is 22. Both of his parents are missing. In an emotional interview with Sky News he said: “It’s just the helplessness at the moment.
“Sitting here we don’t have much, we really can’t do much. Hopefully we hear something soon.
Trying to hold back his tears, Haldia said of his parents: “They mean the world. I don’t think you can say that enough when you’re in front of your parents necessarily, but…
“They mean everything to me and I hope to see them soon.”
In an earlier interview by Sky News, Vidhi Mohan, a former Croydon councillor, said: “We really have no information.
“We know information is very difficult to come out of Tibet and tightly controlled by the Chinese. So this really needs efforts by the [Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office] at the very highest level and I would urge the Foreign Secretary and perhaps even the Prime Minister to get personally involved and try to use any kind of leverage or influence they have over the Chinese authorities to get information about these people.”
International news agencies were reporting tonight that the death toll from the floods had reached 1,000, while the first story of a British citizen rescued from the mud was being reported.
The Briton, who has not yet been named by the authorities, was part of a helicopter rescue carried out by the Nepal army in the Trishuli Nuwakot district, where almost 120 people were found alive after their week-long ordeal.
The glacier collapse, which registered seismic shocks that were measured by scientists across the world, was caused by the global climate crisis, and has created significant instability for communities in the Himalayas, which some fear may result in further deadly flooding or other damaging environmental impacts.
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