British aid volunteer 'mistaken for Nepal flood survivor' after 118 were rescued following disaster which killed more than 1,000
A British aid worker said authorities in Nepal mistook him for a survivor of the devastating flash floods that hit the country last week and wrongly announced that he had been rescued.
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Former Gloucester councillor Alastair Chambers, 45, told the Press Association the mix-up happened when he returned to the capital, Kathmandu, on a humanitarian aid flight after volunteering in a remote village.
Nepali officials had announced on Tuesday that a British man had been rescued from the Rasuwa region of the country.
In a statement on Facebook, the Nepali Army said 119 people, including a British citizen, had been rescued through the use of air resources.
But Mr Chambers said he travelled to the area to help with relief efforts and had not been saved as part of the rescue mission.
After spending several days in a village near the Trishuli river in central Nepal, Mr Chambers flew back to the country’s capital in a humanitarian aid helicopter.
He told PA: “I got in the helicopter, the humanitarian aid helicopter, and I got dropped off at the army barracks, and when I got dropped off one of the police officers came up to me and asked for my details.
“Then they presumed that I’d been rescued. It’s been a bit of a weird one, really.
“I gave them my details, just abiding by the rules, and they obviously thought that I’d been rescued.
“News spreads – I was contacted by about 15 different journalists in the last few hours, just asking how I was and how I’m feeling after being rescued, and I had to say: ‘Well sorry, I haven’t been rescued.'”
The number of British people who have been reported missing since the horrific flash flood is currently 48, with 33 still unaccounted for in Nepal.
The remaining 15 are missing, having last been seen in Tibet.
At least 1,003 people have died in Nepal in the devastating flash flood that hit the Himalayan country's border region with China last week, officials have announced.
Read more: Race to free over 500 people trapped in Nepal tunnels continues - as death toll passes 1,000
A race against time is under way to save at least 900 workers missing from 12 hydropower projects damaged by the flash floods.
Over 500 of the missing workers are believed to be trapped inside tunnels.
Nepal's army has released video footage showing rescue teams entering a network of vast tunnels, wading through mud and water and climbing over rocks as they searched for signs of life.
At least 639 people remain stuck in several devastated hydropower stations that have become a major focus of the rescue efforts.
In total around 4,000 people are still missing in the wake of the flooding.
"Thousands of citizens have lost their homes, families, loved ones and property," Prime Minister Balendra Shah said in a late-night social media post on Monday.
"The government understands the immense pain they are enduring."
Over 11,000 people have been rescued across the affected region while power and communication lines had been restored in some areas, he said, promising support for those displaced by the glacier collapse that sent a deluge of ice, rock and mud sweeping through the impoverished nation's border region with China.
The calamity poses a massive challenge for Shah's six-month-old government.