‘Mummy, mummy’: 5-year-old survives three days trapped in Nepal flood debris

For three days, Geeta Magar did not know whether she would see her 5-year-old daughter again.

Then rescuers searching the wreckage heard a voice from beneath the debris. 

“Mummy, mummy.”

Manisha Magar was alive.

The child was found sheltering beside a tilted pillar nearly three days after flash floods tore through Timure, a small town in Nepal’s Rasuwa district near the Chinese border, The Straits Times reports.

A police officer searching the ruins heard Manisha and traced her voice to a space behind two collapsed pillars, with her mother nearby. She was conscious when rescuers reached her.

Her parents had feared the worst after the river surged through their home on Aug 26. They were unable to reach their youngest child as part of the house was swept away.

Manisha was eventually found about 2km from where the family home had stood, according to the report.

She is now recovering in the paediatric ward of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, with her mother at her bedside.

“The bruises on her face are still healing and I don’t want her to pick at the scabs,” Geeta said as her daughter cuddled up against her.

“Look how tightly she’s holding me,” she said, pointing to Manisha clutching her arm.

Manisha’s father, Lokbahadur Magar, works on hydropower tunnel construction but was not at work when the disaster struck.

Survivors Still Being Found

Manisha’s rescue is among several stories of survival to emerge from the devastating floods.

The disaster swept through communities near the border with Tibet and along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river basins, sending mud, silt and debris downstream and damaging homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces.

More than 1,000 people have died and around 5,000 remain missing, while more than 13,000 people have been rescued, according to the figures cited in the report.

Rescuers have continued to find survivors even days after the flooding.

On Sept 5, Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force rescued 64-year-old Chandrika Shrestha from Betrawati Bazaar, where hundreds of homes had been buried or damaged. She was later airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment.

The same day, the Nepali Army and South Korean disaster experts rescued Chinese national Lu Haitao from a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project. He was reported to be in stable condition.

Nepali workers Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan were also rescued after spending nine days trapped at the damaged Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower project.

Emergency teams are continuing to search damaged hydropower sites and other affected areas for people still missing.

At the teaching hospital in Kathmandu, security guard Gopal Tamang had a simple description for each successful rescue: “nothing but god’s small blessings.”