Nepal Red Cross Chief: Reuniting Families After Devastating Floods

Bishal Kumar Bhadari, who leads the Nepal Red Cross Society, spent the first forty-eight hours after the floods moving between shelters in Nuwakot district, checking that over two thousand rescued people had eaten, had dry clothes, had somewhere to sleep. The access road to Rasuwa, the border district where the water first came down from Tibet, was gone. Phone lines were dead. Electricity was gone. When his team reached Bidur, the last place civilians could travel before the roads became impassable, they found homes, schools, and hospitals buried under mud and debris, with no flat ground even to set up a tent for first aid or food distribution.

Bhadari, a veteran relief worker leading an organization that has existed for sixty-three years, knew the immediate choreography of disaster response: get people to high ground, get them fed, get them warm, get them sheltered. He moved rescued people into nearby hospitals, into schools built on hillsides, into community halls that sat above the flood line. The Red Cross mobilized over a thousand volunteers across the country and set up an Emergency Operation Centre in Kathmandu to coordinate work across Nuwakot, Rasuwa, Dhading, and Chitwan districts, where government forces and the Army were still searching for the missing and recovering bodies.

But the first two days revealed something Bhadari's training had not prepared him for. The people he met had woken that morning with houses and possessions and families and plans. By afternoon, they were refugees with nothing. He watched mothers ask him, over and over, if he could somehow get them across the Trishuli River to their children, who were stranded on the other side. He had no answer. "Their trauma was too huge to fathom," he said later. "What could we say to them?"

The Red Cross began distributing tarpaulins, ready-to-eat food packets, mats, and water. By August 30th, they had handed out more than six thousand hygiene kits, two thousand mattresses, two thousand tarpaulins, two thousand blankets, and hundreds of food items. The International Federation of Red Cross sent one million Swiss francs in immediate assistance. Bhadari's team had asked for twenty-five million more to sustain the work ahead.

For weeks, Bhadari worked until one in the morning, filing reports and coordinating with international Red Cross teams, then slept a few hours in the shelter before waking at five to begin again. The most unbearable part was the mothers asking about their children. He had no way to reunite them. He did not know what to say.

Now back in Kathmandu, Bhadari feels the weight of not being in the field with the people still. But he knows the real work is just beginning. Young college volunteers are manning phones at Red Cross headquarters, taking calls from people searching for missing relatives and collecting donations of food and clothing from residents. The organization has drawn up a timeline: forty-five to sixty days of emergency relief, three to six months of recovery operations, and nearly two years of reconstruction work rebuilding schools, hospitals, livelihoods, and community infrastructure.

Bipul Neupane, the Red Cross's Director of Humanitarian Value, explained the shift in strategy. Right now, people need immediate food and clothing. In a few days, once they have places to cook and semi-permanent shelters, the Red Cross will provide groceries and materials to help them build camp. After meeting with Nepal government officials on rescue updates and the specific needs of each affected district, Bhadari received international Red Cross colleagues arriving from the Netherlands to provide technical assistance.

He will return to the field soon with new supplies and the knowledge that the disaster has destroyed not just buildings but entire communities. "We have to build them back, and it will take time," he said. "We're ready for it."