Separate landslides kill five in Kalikot, Palpa

Surkhet, September 4:

Three members of a family died after they were buried under a landslide’s debris at Rakhu VDC in Kalikot district this morning.

A 42-year-old man Jayaram Budha and his sons 18-year-old Manasara and 12-year-old Tapendra died in the landslide triggered by rainfall, said the Surkhet regional police office. Ten houses are likely to collapse due to the landslide.

Meanwhile, according to our Palpa correspondent, two teenage girls died and two others were injured in a landslide at Juthapauwa-3 Chahala this afternoon.

Bishnu Khadka, 11, and five-month-old Tirsana Kunwar of Baldenggadhi-4 died in the landslide, the Palpa district police office said, adding Asmita Kunwar of Baldenggadhi-4 and another were injured.

A report from Rupandehi said some 500 households in ward numbers 8, 11 and 13 of the Butwal municipality were displaced due to the flooding in Tinau river.

The flooding that occurred yesterday and today is thought to be the worst disaster to hit the area in over 25 years. It has affected at least 2,000 people.

Rekha MC, chairperson of the Settlement Development Committee at Hattisud, told this daily: “This is the most devastating flood after 1981. River water flooded into the settlements due because of weak embankment.”

She said she had witnessed a similar scale flooding in 1981 when the whole of Daure Tole, now a bus park, was swept away. The flood has also destroyed the embankment built by the people, she said. Secretary at ward number 8 of Butwal Municipality, Urmila Shrestha said that the Tinau river had flooded in such a large scale after decades.

“Almost half of 600 land squatters’ sheds at Sundarnagar of Khayardhari area at ward no. 8 have been flooded away,” she said.

Administrative officer at the Butwal Municipality, Krishna Prasad Gyawali said a committee was for-med today, under the coordination of the municipality, comprising representatives of Butwal chamber of commerce and industries, NGO Federation and Nepal Red Cross Society, to assess the damage and to distribute relief materials.