A Nepalese woman in Nova Scotia has been living a nightmare ever since the Aug. 26 deadly flash floods in Nepal.
Ang Faulkner grew up in one of the affected districts — Rasuwa — and says she is missing hundreds of family members, neighbours and childhood friends.
“I just blame myself for not being there in the worst time of their life,” said Faulkner from her home in Bedford, N.S.
Ever since she heard the news, Faulkner says she has struggled to eat or sleep.
It took her two desperate days to make contact with her parents back home.
She says her father had to use a friend’s solar panel just to charge his phone enough to make the two-minute call she was anxiously waiting for.
“All he could say is, ‘I’m safe, your mom is safe. But we have lost a lot of people from here,’” she said. “He could just hear screams and cries from the people of my village.”
Faulkner says many of her missing relatives are now presumed dead.
Among them is her cousin’s wife, who ran a hotel in Syabrubesi, a village that once sat on the banks of the Bhote Koshi River.
“They were just having coffee together, husband and wife, and all of a sudden all he could hear was like a lot of loud noises,” Faulkner said.
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“So, they ran out and everyone was running, like ‘Run! Run!’ And they were running without knowing what was happening.”
She says her cousin managed to grab and pull himself up.
“He looked back. All he could he was a big, massive wave, almost as high as maybe five, six-storey-high building,” she said.
She says his wife was behind him.
“He literally had to see his wife washed away from the flood,” Faulkner said.
Her cousin made it to the mountainside with other survivors where she says they went about 24 hours without any food or water.
“I remember he’s saying, ‘I have nothing left. Like my whole life, my hometown, my wife, my life savings — everything is gone.’”
Faulkner’s aunt and uncle, who ran another hotel in Syabrubesi, are also still unaccounted for.
She’s heard through family members that they were doing housekeeping when the water came.
A video has surfaced on multiple broadcast channels, showing what Faulkner identified as their hotel, succumbing to the massive wave.
She says the mountain village of Syabrubesi has been completely washed away.
Experts say a glacial collapse likely triggered the flooding.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a magnitude 5.2 seismic event occurred near the border between Nepal and Tibet, an autonomous region of China, on Aug. 26 at 8:37 a.m. local time.
Initially reported as an earthquake, the event is now believed to have been caused by a falling glacier, resulting in the flow of debris.
The focus in Nepal remains on rescue and recovery in the primarily affected districts, with the death toll surpassing 1,200 and more than 4,000 still missing.
But for families searching for their missing loved ones, the mud makes closure hard to come by.
“It’s almost like concrete,” Faulkner said. “How are you going to find their bodies?”
She adds that a common practice in Nepal is to send children away to Kathmandu for boarding school once they’re around age five.
This means that many of the flood victims were adults, Faulkner says, and their children are now orphans who will need all the support they can get.
“They have lost a lot, but we can save their future.” Faulkner said. “Support Nepal, stand with us, and try to get answers that families are waiting for.”
Those looking to donate to the relief effort can do so through the Government of Nepal Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund.