From one disaster to the next

One night last week, Asabir Tamang was awoken from his sleep by the grumble of the nearby Trisuli river. He alerted his family and neighbours in the village of Khalte, and in the dark they scrambled up the slope to safety as the waters rose.

It had been pouring all night, and the villagers thought it was a replay of the 8 July flash-flood on the Bhote Kosi that killed 12 people, washed away a vital trade bridge connecting Nepal and China as well as a dry port with electric cars, damaged four hydropower plants and an electric substation.

The Chinese had warned the authorities in Nepal of another flood, and the Uttargaya Municipality was on high alert. Both floods are believed to have been triggered when supra-glacial lakes in the catchment of the Lengde River in Tibet overflowed due to global warming.

The flood on 28 July was not as destructive as the earlier one, but Tamang’s family climbed to safer ground just in time before the flood swept away his tin-roof hut and those of his neighbours last week.

Fifty-eight year old Tamang, his family and 276 other households relocated themselves to the river-side settlement of Khalte after the 2015 earthquake destroyed their villages Mailung, Tiru and Gogane up in the mountains. 

According to the locals, they intially took temporary refuge in Satbise along with other displaced families from Haku. They stayed in an open area provided by the municipality chairman for five months. Later, they rented a place in Naubise for 27 thousand per month, only to be evicted by the landowner after seven months. Eventually, they settled on the public land in Khate where they continue to live today.

Tamang himself lost nine members of his family in Mailung, including his wife, five grandsons and three granddaughters. Repeated aftershocks triggered rockfalls, and it was too dangerous to go back to rebuild homes in their ancestral village.

But while relocating to a new place that would be safe from a seismic disaster, the inhabitants of Khalte have become victims of recurring climate calamities.

“We left the place we were born in, and have been living in fear for the past ten years,” Tamang told us, surveying what used to be home for 17 members of his extended family in Khalte. “But it is just as dangerous here.”

The 2015 earthquake not only displaced, but also divided families. Sanchamaya Ghale, 40, still lives with her husband in her home village of Tiru which was devastated in 2015, while her children are with relatives in Khalte because their school was destroyed in the quake.

Sarita Tamang, 40, is from Gogane, the other village that was destroyed in the earthquake. She and her husband decided to stay back to tend the family farm, while her five children are in Khalte for studies.

Meanwhile, Mingma Tamang took a risk to rebuild his family home in Gogane for Rs1 million. He says, “I spent everything I had earned in Malaysia before the earthquake to rebuild the house.” Tamang lives with the grief of losing his youngest daughter and son who were crushed in their home in the 2015 disaster.

A 2021 research in Gogane and Tiru shows that the earthquake did not just destroy homes, but the traditional community bonds of the Tamang community which provides support in time of need. With families divided and split into groups, that collective spirit of self-help is lacking, and this has also led to socio-psychological distress.

Glan Bahadur Tamang, 60, also moved down to Khalte because it is too traumatic to go back to his ancestral village of Gogane. He does hike up occasionally to sow millet and maize, but does not linger there.

Read also: The unseen wounds of climate disasters, Anek Rajbhandari

Even before last month’s floods destroyed their sheds, the highlanders found Khalte too hot and many who were moved here fell sick to water-borne diseases and other infections.

Today, the villagers only gather in their ancestral homes at funerals of their relatives and friends because their ancestral burial grounds are near the villages that the earthquake forced them to abandon.

For many villagers like Sukumaya Ghale, 57, the idea of going back up to Tiru, Gogane or Mailung is fraught with fear. But Khalte offers no real safety, either. 

“The river can take everything at any time,” says Lalmaya Tamang, 29, recalling the fear that gripped the resettled families on 8 and 28 July. 

There have been efforts to lure the families back to their villages in the mountains from the heat and danger of living in the deep valley of an unpredictable river. In 2020, the Hong Kong-based Kadoorie Foundation, in coordination with the then National Reconstruction Authority built an integrated settlement of 119 houses in Tiru for 152 beneficiaries. 

However, disputes over fair allocation halted the distribution of new homes. They are all locked and vacant, and some are being used for livestock.

“We could have considered moving, but there are no basic facilities like toilets and water taps,” says Norsing Tamang, 58, pointing at a row of empty houses in Tiru.

The Dhading District Level Project Implementation Unit actually bought the land to build the homes for the survivors of the earthquake, but it was not enough for everyone. Says Bam Bahadur, Tamang former chair of Ward 1 of Uttargaya. 

“We didn’t know how to decide who gets what,” he says, “there was no option for further land acquisition.” The government did acquire additional land in Pahirebesi in 2021 to resettle 125 survivor families, but that also turned out to be sufficient for only 103, halting distribution once again. 

Another land plot purchased in Shantibazar in Nuwakot, by the then Dhading-DLPIU for 24 displaced people, also became unviable when a 200KV high-tension line from the Upper Trishuli hydropower project was routed through it. 

The government’s resettlement plans all look good on paper, but here on the ground there are many stories of well-meaning but failed attempts. This year the Ministry of Urban Development has allocated Rs70 million to acquire land for the 86 remaining displaced people in Khalte. But residents are unhappy because there are still not enough housing and the elderly refuse to move into the buildings because they lack basic water and hygiene facilities. 

Experts criticise the one-size-fits-all approach of government and charities. “Integrated settlements post-earthquake have become failures,” says Associate Professor of Rural Development Department, Tribhuvan University, Ratnamani Nepal. “Just building a 2-room house is not a shelter. Livelihoods, access to water, education, and roads, all should be part of the plan.”

Elsewhere in Barpak and other integrated re-settlement in Sindhupalchok the government has overlooked the community needs, cultural sentiments and social networks in the name of construction of integrated settlement. 

‘A settlement is a cultural and social space, without it there is no sense of community,’ explains Nepal. A 2021 research published in ScienceDirect Journal, referring to Khalte, Tiru and Pahirebesi settlements recommends that resettlement and relocation should be community-driven reflecting the priorities of affected people. 

The World Ban’s Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for reconstructing after Natural Disasters notes why relocation after disasters often does not succeed, identifying key problems such as poor site selection, culturally insensitive designs, lack of community input, distance from jobs and network and insufficient funding.

According to the Central Level Project Implementation Unit, post-quake 97 integrated resettlements have been completed and 6 are still under construction in Nepal. The need for proper housing is far greater than relocation.

Chegu lama, 40, still lives in Khalte, and dissuades people from moving there. “There are no basic amenities:  no road, no hospital and no school. We go back and forth to keep up with culture and survival.”

But not everyone agrees. Chiring Tamang, 65 and Yangchen Tamang, 60, make occasional visits from Tiru to Khalte to meet their four sons and daughter-in-laws insist: “They are scared to live here, but at this (old) age we won’t abandon our ancestral home.”