As the landslide swept away Chakra Bahadur Rai´s house in Dhupu VDC-8 of Sankhuwasabha at around 11:20 pm, his 52-year-old wife Dil Kumari, 23-year-old daughter Samala, 20-year-old daughter-in-law Usha, who was pregnant and an infant son-in-law Pratap were buried to death. Krishna Bahadur Ghimire, a resident of the same village, who was staying at Rai´s house as a guest, also died. However, Ghimire and Dil Kumari´s bodies had not been recovered from the debris until Tuesday evening, according to Chandra Kanta Neupane, Assistant Chief District Officer (CDO) of Sankhuwasabha.
Chandra Bahadur´s 24-year-old son Som Bahadur and 12-year-old daughter Kamala were also buried under the debris. They were rescued alive by local villagers some 100 meters down the house. They have been airlifted by a Nepal Army (NA) chopper to BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS) hospital in Dharan.
Although the local villagers dragged the injured siblings from under the wreckage within half an hour of the landslide, they were brought to Dharan only on Tuesday evening. As Dhupu, a five-hour walk from Khandbari, the district headquarters of Sankhuwasabha, is not connected to other parts of the district by a motor road, the villagers had to wait for more than 16 hours to take the injured to the Dharan hospital. Chandra Bahadur, the head of the family, has been working in India for more than a year now. According to Tara Rai, a local of Dhupu VDC, who accompanied the injured siblings to Dharan, the landslide was triggered by rains that continued for the last four days. "The house (of Chandra Bahadur) was beneath a mound that fell over it," she told Republica.
According to acting CDO Neupane, two separate teams of police and NA personnel have been already sent to Dhup VDC to collect the details of the damage. "Other teams of government officials and Red Cross members have also reached there with humanitarian aid," he said. According to him, the government will provide Rs 40,000 to each of the landslide victims and Rs 5,000 to rebuild the wrecked house.
Box story
"A huge rock fell over us" - Som Bahadur Rai, one of two survivors
I and my wife Usha were about to sleep after putting our 13-month-old baby boy to sleep. I heard something like a bang. I hurried out of my room and stood on the verandah. When I saw some trees falling and coming down from a hill that stood right in front of our house, I realized that it was a landslide. But, before I could do anything, a huge rock fell over our house; and we were all buried under the debris. A few moments later, I heard my little sister Kamala cry for help. I also started shouting for help. Half an hour later, the neighbors gathered around our house and pulled me from the wreckage. Although I and my sister survived, everyone else died. I lost my pregnant wife and baby.
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