Family Held Funeral Rites for Her — Then Rescuers Heard “Save Me” from the Rubble 10 Days Later
In the devastated village of Betrawati in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, hope had already given way to mourning. The family of 64-year-old Chandika Kumari Shrestha had accepted the worst after catastrophic floods swept through the region. They began the traditional 11-day Hindu mourning rites, convinced the elderly woman had perished when her four-storey home was torn from its foundations and buried under thick layers of mud, water and debris.
Ten days later, that assumption was shattered.
On Saturday, September 5, 2026, police officer Mahendra Darnal and his rescue team were searching the ruins when they heard a faint voice calling for help. The house, once a solid structure, had been carried away by the torrent and left stranded in what rescuers described as a quicksand-like expanse of compacted white deposits. Inside a narrow pocket of air amid the water and mud, they found Shrestha alive.
The extraction took 45 minutes. She was carefully freed from the confined space and immediately flown to an army hospital for treatment. Darnal later confirmed he had been in contact with the family throughout the ordeal and knew they had already started the mourning period.
The floods that struck in late August were triggered by a glacial collapse high in the Himalayas. A wall of ice, rock and water tore through the valley, burying markets, homes and entire sections of Betrawati under debris that hardened almost like concrete. Across Nepal the disaster claimed more than 1,300 lives. Thousands more remain missing or unaccounted for, with bodies recovered far downstream and mass burials held for unidentified victims.
Betrawati was among the hardest-hit areas. Search teams continue to dig through collapsed buildings, blowing whistles and listening for any sign of life. In the days before Shrestha’s rescue, 24 bodies in advanced decomposition had been found in the local market area alone. Yet remarkable survivals still surface. An eight-year-old boy who climbed trees to escape the waters was earlier reunited with his mother. Three people, including a Chinese national, were pulled alive from a hydropower tunnel near the Trishuli River.
Shrestha’s survival stands out for its length and the circumstances. For more than a week she endured without food or water in a space so restricted that any shift in the surrounding mud could have proved fatal. Her family’s decision to begin mourning rites reflected the grim reality faced by many: after days of searching and no contact, acceptance of death became the only way to move forward under traditional customs.
The broader rescue effort remains intense. Authorities continue scanning tunnels and hardened mud deposits even as hope fades for many. Glacial-lake outburst floods of this scale highlight the growing risks climate change poses to high-mountain communities, where rapid melting and unstable ice create sudden, catastrophic events.
Shrestha’s return from presumed death offers a rare moment of light amid the devastation. While recovery for the region will take years, her story underscores the determination of rescue teams who refuse to stop listening — and the extraordinary resilience of those still waiting to be found.
