Nepal floods: 8-year-old boy reunited with mother after surviving disaster

Nepal Floods: 8-Year-Old Boy Reunited with Mother After Surviving Devastating Floods

LANGTANG VALLEY, Nepal — Eight-year-old Zoyal Ghale was airlifted to Kathmandu on Thursday with a broken leg and facial injuries after surviving days stranded in the Nepalese mountains following deadly floods that killed at least 580 people across Nepal and China’s Tibet. On Friday, he was reunited with his mother, Matti Maya Tamang, in a heartbreaking yet hopeful moment after she had feared both of her children were lost in the disaster.

The floods, triggered by a glacial collapse near Langtang Lirung mountain, destroyed entire villages in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading districts north of Kathmandu. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that at least 17,000 children have been affected, and authorities with UNICEF and Nepal’s government are working to identify and reunite displaced families.

Zoyal had been separated from his family after the disaster struck on Wednesday. He recounted how he ran from his school into the forest with a friend and climbed trees to escape the raging floodwaters. His mother, Tamang, spent days searching for him and his younger brother, only to be told repeatedly that their names were not on any survivor lists.

“I had come to accept that both my children were no more,” Tamang said. “All I could do was weep. I couldn’t hold myself together at all.”

Her hopes were revived when she obtained the phone number of Reuters journalist Sahana Bajracharya, who had met Zoyal at a small hospital in Nuwakot. Bajracharya and her team had gone to the hospital after learning about a young boy who arrived with no known family. Zoyal, clutching two 10-rupee notes given to him by rescuing officers, agreed to be filmed in hopes of reconnecting with his loved ones.

When Bajracharya called Tamang with the news that Zoyal was alive and had been transferred to Kathmandu, she could barely believe it.

“I had already given up that I would find them,” she said.

Tamang had already located her younger son, and when she found Zoyal on Friday, she said, “After I found the elder one, I felt my life was back.”

The disaster began when the lower portion of a glacier near Langtang Lirung collapsed, sending an avalanche of ice and rock into the valley below. The landslide sent water and debris rushing through northern Nepal and into Tibet, flattening communities within minutes. The school Zoyal attended was destroyed, and the landscape became unrecognizable.

Zoyal’s father, a construction worker in Japan, is on his way to Kathmandu to reunite with the family.

As Nepal begins to recover, Tamang expressed relief that her son is safe, though she acknowledged the emotional toll of the ordeal.

“Oh, he is always a mischievous kid,” she said. “This is not his first broken bone.”

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