On the ground in decimated Nepal flood zone – The Latest

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0:30at every level. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoff. Rescue operations are now continuing into their third day after the devastating and catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet, with the death toll now tragically surpassing 500. Hannah Ellis-Peterson, you are our South Asia correspondent. You have been as close as you can get to the affected region, the flood zone. Where were you and what did you see there? So today we drove up to Bidur, which is, as you say, one of the only regions that's currently accessible by road. The roads in almost every other part of the flood affected regions have been washed away.

1:14Bridges have been washed away. People are having to be evacuated by helicopter. But Bidur is one of the places you can. They've managed to clear the roads. But it is a town completely devastated. It's on the banks of the Trishuli River. And on Wednesday morning a massive rush of debris and mud came rushing down the valley and absolutely decimated this small town and there's very little left standing a few concrete buildings that are completely mangled there are still bodies in some of these buildings hundreds of people from this town are missing and the whole place it's just still completely submerged in mud it's absolutely horrifying to see and actually most of it is still not accessible everyone that I met there their homes had disappeared.

1:58They'd gone. They'd lost everything that they had. They'd lost family members. Most of them had survived by clinging onto trees or to buildings. But, you know, they'd seen their husbands, their children, their grandmothers washed away. And they were there in the kind of debris of their town looking for their relatives and hoping that the rescue workers had pulled them out, had seen something. So it was absolutely just gutting to see, absolutely horrifying. And, you know, this is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the devastation. You know, further up was the kind of army base where all of this is being coordinated and helicopters were coming in and out every three to four minutes, bringing people in, in absolute devastation.

2:45You know, they fell to the ground from these helicopters and just sobbed because they had been taken from villages that had been erased before their eyes and they'd lost everything and they'd had to leave behind family members who they hadn't been able to find. And people were kind of gathering and desperately trying to find information. But, you know, this is a catastrophe that is still unfolding and there are still massive amounts of areas that they've only just been able to access with one or two helicopters. Yeah, so the current death toll of 500 feels like it could really rise tragically exponentially.

3:20So Hannah, you yourself started the day in Bedor but were forced to evacuate because there have been further warnings about possible further flooding. What are we hearing from authorities about that? So, yeah, it was a pretty scary situation. We went down there just to see the river. It was already rushing pretty fast and, you know, pretty intensely. We'd been down there for maybe 15, 20 minutes trying to talk to people. And then the police officers came and they moved everyone out. They started whistling and, you know, we wanted to stay. And they were like, no, the river is rising. It's rising fast.

3:54And we turned around and you could see it. It had picked up the pace and it was coming down quicker. And they moved everybody out, you know, pushing everyone up and up and up the hill. There was news that had come down that, you know, a flood much further up had broken its banks and it was crashing further down into the river. And the river levels had risen by two feet in a matter of minutes. And they were going to possibly rise higher. So, you know, they had to halt the rescue operations. Everyone in Bidor who was trying to go back to their homes had to be moved. And, you know, people had to be brought back up to much higher ground.

4:28And it was just an example of how, you know, this is, as I said, a catastrophe that hasn't ended. the risk is still there and you know a lot of the communities that are still stuck you know people are still stuck up there and they're still very vulnerable yeah and stuck in unimaginable conditions without clean water without power without any ability to contact relatives who will be desperately trying to contact them the Nepalese government it's being reported is refusing help from international governments who've offered support what do we know about that and why might the Nepalese government do that?

5:04Well, it's a good question. I mean, because it is clearly a huge catastrophe. But there is a sense, I think, that Nepal kind of wants to, you know, they have a newly elected government, one that's quite young and trying to prove itself. Possibly they kind of want to be the ones to sort of, at least at the beginning, take hold of this catastrophe and kind of try and bring it under their control. The Nepali army are kind of coordinating everything. Possibly there is a sense that you bring in other armies in this very difficult unknown terrain and you complicate things rather than actually making it easier but it certainly seems that this is a catastrophe that needs international support and help at every level you know they're you know as much as the nepali army are doing their best they are completely overwhelmed that was very very clear in this camp there just isn't enough help in nepal to help with the scale of the catastrophe there and a number of people whose lives have been absolutely destroyed who will need help going forward.

5:58So, you know, the reasons Nepal kind of want to, you know, run this by themselves at the beginning is possibly just, you know, a sense of national pride, a sense that they are the ones who, you know, know best. But I think going forward, this will be something the international community will have to help out with. Yeah, it certainly sounds that way. One of the sort of more difficult aspects of this is where this catastrophe took place, which is on the Tibetan-Nepalese border. Tibet, obviously being a country that many Tibetans consider to be autonomous, but is run with an iron fist by China. And part of it, or part of it's being reported, part of this might have been a lack of communication from China to Nepal about this disaster coming, and also foreign journalists not being allowed into Tibet and so relying on reports coming out of Chinese state media that may not be entirely accurate.

6:53There's huge anti-China feeling currently in Nepal. There is a sense that there was an agreement made by ministers a few years ago that they would do information sharing regarding you know these kinds of natural disasters on the border which is not something that China often does but there was a sense here I believe here that China didn't alert Nepal or didn't alert them in time to, you know, the catastrophe that had unfolded in Tibet and that it allowed, you know, water to gush down. Then the first time that villagers knew this was going to happen was when their villages were being destroyed.

7:24The first time the Nepal government knew this catastrophe was unfolding was when, you know, the waters hit. And as you say, it's also very unclear of the kind of the scale of catastrophe in Tibet and, you know, exactly how, you know, exactly what's happening up there. There is an enormous information blackout. And in these kinds of disasters, you need to have as much information as possible to help the communities up there. You know, this is a very difficult terrain. The more information you have about, you know, different circumstances, even today, the lake bursting, you know, that happened up near the border of Tibet.

7:54So that kind of information needs to be filtering down very, very fast. And it's an example of how, you know, in this kind of climate, you know, these kind of geopolitical difficulties, you know, just complicate, you know, a very already very difficult situation. And, you know, this is a very, very fragile region. So this kind of politics just makes things even harder. Yeah, and add to that, this is an example of a region that is being most affected by the climate emergency. I mean, I think the evidence is now mounting that this melting glacier that caused the flash floods had been warned some time ago by climate scientists as being a really risky area that this could happen.

8:39but yet Nepal contributes very little in relative terms to carbon emissions globally there must be a real sense of anger in Nepal that they are being hardest hit by the climate emergency by global heating whilst themselves contributing so little to emissions yeah I mean this is a feeling that's been going on for a long time Nepal has been bearing the brunt of you know the climate crisis for years now you know at the time when people were denying the climate crisis Nepal was you know living through it every single day and particularly the himalayan region you know the speed at which the snow is melting the floods that that is causing the devastation it's causing to the daily lives of people here you know it's it is just you feel it on the ground every single day it's people's live reality and people already here are suffering there's huge amounts of poverty very little jobs so you know the fact that they then have to kind of have their entirely daily existence on the precipice of you know whatever next national natural disaster is going to strike is just something that Nepali people are having to deal with.

9:40And the fact that the world is just turning away and not really feeling like this is an urgent problem or something that they can kind of, I guess, ignore, it just isn't the case here. And the consensus among all the scientists is these disasters will keep happening. And this region is one of the most fragile in the world. And this region was hit by a very similar flood last year. It wasn't as big, but this is the thing. It will keep escalating year on year. And so that's the kind of reality of what the climate crisis actually looks like when you stand in these towns decimated by these flash floods.

10:14Well, Hannah, thank you so much for your reporting and stay safe. Thank you so much, Lucy. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Hannah Ellis-Peterson, The Guardian South Asia correspondent. You can keep up with all her reporting over at theguardian.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual on Monday morning. The latest will be back with you on Monday night. This episode was produced by Rosie Peters-McDonald and Annie Levespa. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch. And it was presented by me, Lucy Hoff.

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