Border post obliterated: “Can’t stop searching”

 

Mia Holmberg Karlsson/TT

 

Published 20.44

           

          A rescue worker at the Gyirong border post, which was destroyed by landslides and floods on                      August 26. Picture from September 6. Photo: Tingshu Wang/AP/TT

Nothing remains of the five-story customs building.

The bustling Gyirong border post was reduced to rubble in the disaster in August. Hundreds of people are believed to be buried in thick mud.

The border gate in Gyirong, where Nepal meets Tibet, was 20 meters high. Every day hundreds of tourists and traders passed through here. Now not a trace of the building is visible.

What remains is a lunar landscape of compacted clay and scattered boulders. Heavy excavators and Chinese rescue workers move slowly across the area.

– I can’t stop searching. If I pause, I start thinking about my brothers and sisters and all the memories from here,” border worker Gui Xinwei told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, as reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Everything gone

The first dramatic images of the disaster on August 26 came from here. In a widely shared clip from a surveillance camera high on the hill, people were seen running for their lives as the border post was swallowed by a massive, brown wave of mud.

Gui Xinwei was on vacation when the huge mass of rock and ice collapsed in the Himalayas, sending a powerful wave downstream through the Bhote Koshi River.

When he returned, everything was gone. Only a lone conifer on a hill reminded him of the place where he had worked for more than 20 years.

No survivors

It feels like he has been thrown into a “parallel universe,” he told CCTV.

– With every little thing I dig up, a piece of clothing, a piece of jewelry, makeup or just something small – maybe a charging cord or a mobile phone case – I wonder if they belonged to my colleagues. But I know they belonged to someone.

No survivors have been found in Gyirong. A pile of yellow flowers placed in the mud honors all those who were lost.

The total death toll in Nepal and Tibet is up to 1,400, while more than 5,300 people are missing. Among them are hundreds of foreign tourists and pilgrims.