Kaman Singh Tamang of Satbise in Uttargaya Rural Municipality, Rasuwa, survived the 2015 earthquake that destroyed his house. After the calamity, he and other residents were moved to Satbise near Betrawati from Tiru. He rebuilt his home there and continued living in the village.

On August 26, Kaman Singh did not survive the deadly Bhotekoshi flood. Neither did his wife or children.

His elder brother Santosh said more than 65 families relocated after the earthquake were caught in the disaster. Apart from a few people who were away from home, almost everyone was swept away.

“We survived the earthquake, but we could not remain in the village,” said Rajan Ghale, a local. “Now not only the village is gone, but the villagers themselves have been swept away.”

The 2015 earthquake and its aftershocks killed nearly 9,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. Rasuwa was among the worst-hit districts. The government began relocating families from high-risk areas after experts recommended moving settlements threatened by landslides.

Dozens of people were killed in Rasuwa’s Goljung, Sanohaku, Thulo Haku, Tiru and Dandagaun areas. After expert teams recommended relocating the affected settlements, displaced families were moved to safer locations including Khalte and Satbise in Rasuwa, and Naubise, Shanti Bazaar and Gerku in neighbouring Nuwakot.

Yuvraj Tamang, who moved from Dandagaun to Naubise’s Kainchaltar after the earthquake, lost his parents and four-year-old son in the flood. “We came to Kainchaltar looking for a safe place,” he said. “We could not survive even in a place that was considered safe.”

Another quake-displaced resident Som Bahadur Ghale was in Rasuwa when the flood struck. Ghale, a driver, had gone to Rasuwagadhi to collect electric vehicles arriving from China and stayed in Timure. He has still not contacted his family in Battar. His parents-in-law and two sons remain out of contact.

Pradip Adhikari of Tupche in Bidur Municipality-7 said the flood took away more than the earthquake did. “The earthquake destroyed our house, but at least the land remained,” he said. “Now even the land is gone. Everything has become a riverbed.”

“Now there is nothing. People who escaped with their lives and are sheltering in nearby villages do not even have clothes to wear,” said Pradip.

Karsang Bute of Syaphrubesi in Gosaikunda Rural Municipality lost her husband Sanukanchha along with relatives and neighbours. She reached Battar by helicopter on Saturday after pleading with the army for help. Her house had been damaged in the 2015 earthquake, but the latest disaster made it impossible to return.

“The house has not collapsed in the flood, but it is no longer possible to live there,” she said. “The village is gone and so are our relatives. Some families have one person left; others have lost eight or nine members and are now alone.”

Purna Bahadur Ghale, an executive member from Uttargaya-1, lost seven relatives. He was sheltering at a holding centre at Shivalaya Basic School in Laharepauwa.

“Two seconds made the difference between life and death,” he said. “People were shouting, telling everyone to run to a safe place, but those very people were swept away.

“We are earthquake survivors. We saved our lives then,” he said. “I must have gone to Singha Durbar more than 100 times asking the government to move us to a safe place. They kept saying it would happen, but they never moved us.”

Chhegu Lama of Khalte also survived the earthquake but lost several relatives in the flood. Seven from Khalte remain missing.

“The government said after the earthquake that this place was not fit for settlement and that we would be moved to a safe place, but it never happened,” said Chhegu. “The flood has now swept away the place where we were living. There is hardly anyone left in the village.”

Madhav Prasad Aryal, chairman of Uttargaya Rural Municipality, said the government had earlier decided to relocate earthquake-affected settlements and allocated funds, but the process was not properly addressed after the Gen Z protests and political changes.

“We were trying to move the earthquake-affected people of Khalte to Pahire, where around 300 people lived,” Aryal said. “Half of the proposed site has now been washed away. Had we moved them there, this scale of human loss might not have occurred because there would have been somewhere to escape.”