Funerals Continue All Day Amid Severe Shortages of Morgue Facilities

[Anchor]

The aftermath of the massive floods has engulfed even Nepal's capital, Kathmandu. While bodies of victims continue to pour in, a severe shortage of mortuary facilities is leaving grieving families in deep anguish. Families of the missing search for their loved ones, hoping at least to recover their bodies.

Reporter Kwon Min-gyu brings us this report from Kathmandu.

[Reporter]

Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, located in northern Kathmandu.

The exterior walls of the building are densely covered with notices and memos bearing personal information and pleas to find missing persons.

Four days after the devastating floods struck, hundreds of people crowd the hospital every day to search for the missing.

A woman breaks down in tears while putting up a flyer to find her beloved family member.

A nephew is also in agonizing suspense as he searches for his uncle, who worked as a driver at a hydroelectric power plant construction site being built by a South Korean company.

[Family of Missing Person: It has been a few days since I last found my uncle. He worked as a driver at the (Doosan) hydroelectric power plant site.]

Photographs for identification are also plastered all over the mortuary building behind the hospital, where bodies are kept.

Due to the sheer scale of the disaster, even freezers capable of temporarily storing bodies are in woefully short supply.

It is estimated that there are only about 350 body storage freezers available across all of Nepal, which is barely half the number of confirmed deaths so far.

Families linger in front of the iron gates of the mortuary, hoping against hope that they can at least find the bodies of their loved ones.

[Pratista Tamang / Family of Missing Person: I miss them so much. There is so much I want to say when I meet them....]

At the nearby cremation grounds, funerals for identified victims continue throughout the day.

In Nepal, where the majority of the population is Hindu, victims' souls are honored by cremating their bodies using wooden logs.

[Gunjaman Shrestha / Local Resident: In our neighborhood alone, 12 people lost their lives. We are waiting because we heard the bodies would be autopsied at the hospital and brought here for cremation.]

While identification of the missing and treatment of the injured are underway, it is expected to take a much longer time for the scars of the disaster to heal.

(Camera Reporter: Seol Chi-hwan, Kang Si-woo | Video Editor: Chae Chul-ho)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.