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Mud like quicksand: On the ground in Nepal · The Morning Edition

• 0:03
  S1: Six days ago, a massive flash flood swept like an
• 0:07
  S1: avalanche through villages and towns on the Nepal Tibet border,
• 0:11
  S1: sweeping away homes, roads and bridges. Hundreds of people are dead.
• 0:16
  S1: Thousands are missing, including 43 Australians. My name is Tammy
• 0:22
  S1: Mills and I'm the executive producer of The Morning Edition.
• 0:25
  S1: And joining us today is South East Asia correspondent Zak Hope.
• 0:32
  S1: Zak tell us what it's like there on the ground.
• 0:35
  S1: What's kind of the things that have really struck you
• 0:37
  S1: at such an immense tragedy?
• 0:40
  S2: Well, we've been here for several days now. I've actually
• 0:44
  S2: lost count, to be honest with you, Tammy. But we
• 0:46
  S2: were here pretty soon after the tragedy. Um, we are
• 0:52
  S2: at the moment in a town called Dhunche, which is, um,
• 0:56
  S2: not too far from the Chinese border. There's still still
• 0:59
  S2: quite a way to go, but, um, I'm sitting here
• 1:02
  S2: looking at, uh, in the distance, I can see a
• 1:05
  S2: towering mountain covered in snow. And it's. That's called Langtang Himal.
• 1:11
  S2: The Trishuli River is down in the valley in front
• 1:14
  S2: of me, and I can see it flowing here. And
• 1:16
  S2: I can see, uh, how it's sort of carved the,
• 1:19
  S2: the forest, um, out of the, the valley floor. Um,
• 1:24
  S2: so if you were sitting here on, on Wednesday morning,
• 1:26
  S2: you would have heard and saw it all come through.
• 1:28
  S2: And that's what some of the people at the hotel
• 1:30
  S2: last night were talking about. Um, you know, it's just,
• 1:33
  S2: it's spectacular. Just beautiful country. Um, this view right now
• 1:37
  S2: is an absolute postcard, but I guess the reason why
• 1:41
  S2: it is so spectacular is just these extraordinary forces of nature. Um,
• 1:46
  S2: and the other side of that is tragedies like the
• 1:49
  S2: 2015 earthquake that killed 9000 people. Um, the one just
• 1:54
  S2: the other day that's killed an unknown number of people.
• 2:00
  S3: Well, this is a major disaster, Natalia, that's unfolded just
• 2:02
  S3: in the last few hours. Massive flash flooding sweeping through
• 2:06
  S3: parts of Nepal.
• 2:07
  S4: Experts believe it was the result of a glacier collapse
• 2:11
  S4: in the Himalayas, which set off a catastrophic chain of
• 2:14
  S4: events an ice avalanche that gathered rock and debris as
• 2:18
  S4: it headed downstream.
• 2:21
  S5: Oh my God, oh my God. Meru.
• 2:27
  S6: Like, hundreds of people are there and no food. Everybody
• 2:30
  S6: got diarrhea, you know, like nothing.
• 2:35
  S1: Take us back to when you first arrived in the
• 2:38
  S1: area and your first met with these scenes of devastation.
• 2:41
  S1: Tell me about what you first take notice of.
• 2:44
  S2: So traveling north out of Kathmandu, the first town that
• 2:48
  S2: you can see that has been devastated is called Dungay
• 2:51
  S2: or Dungay Bazaar. Not to be confused with Dhunche, which
• 2:54
  S2: is where I am at the moment. The first thing
• 2:58
  S2: that you see when you pull up to that site
• 3:00
  S2: on the left, the Trishuli River and just the mud
• 3:05
  S2: and just some buildings poking out over the top of that,
• 3:07
  S2: the ones that are still standing, the rest have been
• 3:09
  S2: swept away. as you go up the main street a
• 3:13
  S2: little bit further, as far as you can go, actually,
• 3:15
  S2: because the rescue workers and the, um, the engineers are
• 3:19
  S2: trying to clear everything from the main street is just the, uh, the,
• 3:23
  S2: the first and the second floors of all the buildings
• 3:26
  S2: just sort of blown out, covered in mud, crumbling. Um,
• 3:32
  S2: you know, and I just sort of talk about the mud.
• 3:35
  S2: And I, I wrote about this the other day. It's just,
• 3:38
  S2: it is just everywhere and it looks quite compacted, but
• 3:43
  S2: it's just absolutely, it's just absolute quicksand. And, you know,
• 3:46
  S2: we saw lots of people just trying to walk across
• 3:48
  S2: it thinking that, you know, um, they could just go
• 3:51
  S2: from A to B across this sort of little stretch
• 3:53
  S2: of mud and then just instantly sinking and needing be
• 3:56
  S2: needing to be helped. And, you know, it just sort
• 3:59
  S2: of struck me like, my goodness, this, the, the, the rescue,
• 4:03
  S2: the salvage process is just going to be so difficult
• 4:07
  S2: because you just have to move, um, inch by inch
• 4:10
  S2: by inch over this stuff because anything can be under
• 4:12
  S2: that mud, like a, you know, cavities of homes or, um,
• 4:16
  S2: sharp debris and bodies. Um, so it was really just
• 4:21
  S2: quite an extraordinary scene of devastation. And there's towns like
• 4:24
  S2: that all the way up as you go north, extremely
• 4:27
  S2: hard to access. Um, and that's what we're looking at doing.
• 4:30
  S2: We're trying to see the scale of the damage. We're
• 4:33
  S2: trying to see how aid is coming in. We're trying
• 4:36
  S2: to see, um, how people are faring. It's really difficult
• 4:40
  S2: because the main road is washed out to get up
• 4:43
  S2: to the northern areas. And these sort of northern areas
• 4:45
  S2: are where the Australians were last seen the route from,
• 4:48
  S2: from Kathmandu, sort of travelling up that road through these
• 4:51
  S2: towns by the Trishuli River is a really popular route
• 4:54
  S2: for Hindu pilgrims. Uh, so they will come through and
• 5:00
  S2: they will stay often reasonably close to the Tibet border
• 5:03
  S2: and then get up in the morning, get in their
• 5:05
  S2: buses or in their cars and go off in tour
• 5:08
  S2: groups to, um, to go and see Mount Kailash, which
• 5:11
  S2: is a, which is a sacred, a sacred site. So
• 5:13
  S2: it's part of a pilgrimage this time of year. It's
• 5:15
  S2: quite busy with Hindu pilgrims. And this is why the
• 5:20
  S2: toll of foreigners killed or missing is so high, because
• 5:24
  S2: these places were so busy.
• 5:25
  S1: What's your sense of how how the locals are are
• 5:29
  S1: trying to make sense of what's happened? They would never
• 5:33
  S1: have experienced anything like this before. In fact, like most
• 5:35
  S1: people in the entire world would never have encountered such
• 5:39
  S1: a disaster. How are they making sense of it? What's
• 5:43
  S1: their focus on?
• 5:45
  S2: Yeah, no, you're right, they haven't seen anything like this.
• 5:47
  S2: And that says a lot because Nepal is very used
• 5:51
  S2: to natural disasters. So there's been, uh, there's been, there's
• 5:55
  S2: been floods before. Absolutely. Um, but, you know, we, many
• 6:01
  S2: people have told us that nothing, nothing ever like this.
• 6:05
  S2: So we were told at one place that when, when
• 6:08
  S2: news came through from further north that there was a
• 6:10
  S2: flood coming through, that people actually went out onto the
• 6:12
  S2: bridge to get photos of it. You know, they thought
• 6:15
  S2: it might might make a nice photo. Of course, they
• 6:17
  S2: didn't expect that this was going to be just an
• 6:20
  S2: absolute crashing wall of waves. This wasn't this wasn't really
• 6:25
  S2: a flood. This was an inland tsunami. And so that
• 6:29
  S2: swept away the bridge and those people on it. So
• 6:31
  S2: where we just were in Dungu, nobody knows how many
• 6:33
  S2: people are actually missing there. It's still too soon and
• 6:36
  S2: they can't access, um, the site further north. So it's
• 6:39
  S2: still very much a work in process. But yeah, people,
• 6:43
  S2: everyone here has just said we never expected it to
• 6:45
  S2: be like this. We've never seen anything like this. We
• 6:49
  S2: met one chicken farmer, uh, in hospital in Kathmandu who had, um,
• 6:56
  S2: a very harrowing, uh, story. Uh, he got a phone
• 7:02
  S2: call from a friend further upstream in the morning warning
• 7:06
  S2: him to, uh, get everyone to higher ground that there
• 7:10
  S2: was this wall of water coming. So this farmer grabbed
• 7:13
  S2: his whistle and ran down to the main street and
• 7:15
  S2: started blowing his whistle, shouting at people to run to
• 7:18
  S2: higher ground, run to higher ground. But it was already
• 7:21
  S2: too late. The water was coming. It consumed the bridge.
• 7:25
  S2: He saw some children standing over by a building. Ran over,
• 7:30
  S2: grabbed the smaller ones by the hands, and told the
• 7:33
  S2: bigger ones to run ahead. And that's when the the.
• 7:36
  S2: The surge consumed them all and swept all the children away,
• 7:40
  S2: except for one whose hand he still held. But quite quickly,
• 7:44
  S2: as they were getting tossed around amid the. The debris
• 7:47
  S2: of homes and sheet metal and vehicles, even. Um, that
• 7:53
  S2: little hand just slipped away and he was gone. Um,
• 7:57
  S2: and this farmer was swept several hundred meters down, or
• 8:00
  S2: about 100, at least 100m downstream and managed to clamber
• 8:04
  S2: himself out. But that wasn't the end of his ordeal.
• 8:07
  S2: He still had to. He had serious head injuries, head injuries,
• 8:10
  S2: and still had to get treatment. And it was another
• 8:13
  S2: two days going to various health clinics, being taken to
• 8:16
  S2: some remote hospitals who just couldn't treat him. It was
• 8:19
  S2: two days before he eventually made it to to Kathmandu.
• 8:22
  S2: And that's just one story, you know. Um, you know,
• 8:26
  S2: his His figure would come up in the statistics as
• 8:29
  S2: as injured. But there's, you know, thousands of people either
• 8:33
  S2: dead or missing. So there's just so many, you know,
• 8:38
  S2: just so many awful things, so many awful things have
• 8:41
  S2: happened out there.
• 8:42
  S1: Zack, what does the recovery effort look like now?
• 8:46
  S2: So Nepal at first wanted to do the recovery itself.
• 8:51
  S2: That changed. Now there are specialist teams coming in from overseas,
• 8:55
  S2: people from China for tunnel rescues, for example. Has that
• 8:59
  S2: taken too long? I think the people would say yes.
• 9:02
  S2: What what we've been what we've been told here is
• 9:04
  S2: that people desperately needing help have looked up and they've
• 9:07
  S2: seen helicopters flying around, but they're always going to other places. Um, the, the,
• 9:13
  S2: the farmer I mentioned, he was just hoping that one
• 9:16
  S2: of those helicopters would come land near him, but he
• 9:18
  S2: just kept seeing it go off to other places. Um, the,
• 9:22
  S2: the one man we spoke to here in last night
• 9:24
  S2: said the same thing. All the helicopters just kept going,
• 9:27
  S2: you know, elsewhere. None ever sort of came around to
• 9:30
  S2: the area where just opposite the hydropower plant where people
• 9:35
  S2: are missing right now. Um, there's no buzz of helicopters
• 9:39
  S2: in the air at the moment. Now, there might be
• 9:40
  S2: people on the ground. Um, but I think it's fair
• 9:43
  S2: to say that that they, Nepal absolutely does need more
• 9:48
  S2: help from overseas to be able to do this, um,
• 9:52
  S2: extraordinary rescue because these places are all cut off by road.
• 9:56
  S2: They need more help, more helicopters. I think every, every
• 9:59
  S2: helicopter in Nepal has essentially been commandeered for this. And
• 10:02
  S2: I and I'll give you an example, Tammy. And that
• 10:05
  S2: still doesn't that still doesn't seem to be enough, because yesterday,
• 10:09
  S2: the only way to get up to where we are
• 10:10
  S2: now is to come through the back, this back sort
• 10:13
  S2: of little known route through the mountains. So where it
• 10:16
  S2: would normally take a few hours to get from Kathmandu
• 10:19
  S2: to where I am now, we're on the road yesterday
• 10:21
  S2: for 12 hours, and a lot of that time is
• 10:25
  S2: you're stopped on this, you're stopped at the road. It's
• 10:28
  S2: just sort of this mountain, one way mountain path, and
• 10:31
  S2: you're stopped at the road because there's cars coming the
• 10:33
  S2: other way, so it might take at one. At one point,
• 10:36
  S2: it took more than an hour for us to be
• 10:38
  S2: able to negotiate 3 or 4 cars coming towards us
• 10:42
  S2: and us going forwards and a few other cars coming
• 10:44
  S2: behind us. And um, so it just sort of gives
• 10:48
  S2: you an indication how difficult it is now. Now, some
• 10:49
  S2: of these cars in our convoy were carrying aid, you know,
• 10:53
  S2: so they're trying to get up desperately. They can't get
• 10:55
  S2: their stuff into a helicopter to go deliver aid to people.
• 10:58
  S2: So they were very frustrated at the fact that they
• 11:00
  S2: that they can't get helicopters as well to, to come
• 11:03
  S2: and give much needed aid to people.
• 11:06
  S1: Well, Zach, thank you so much for your time.
• 11:08
  S2: No worries.
• 11:10
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• 11:13
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• 11:19
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