Kathmandu, Sept. 15 -- The children were running towards the road, screaming.

At the time, Sabitri Tamang was in her field at Satbise, Nuwakot, gathering fodder for her cattle, when she saw students from the nearby Shree Ramchandra Basic School fleeing. She asked them what had happened.

"Run," they told her. A dam in China had collapsed, they said, and a massive flood was approaching.

The children ran towards the cliff. Tamang ran towards her home to save her grandchildren. By the time she reached there, the flood had already begun swallowing everything in its path.

Tamang, a resident of Aangitar in Nuwakot, is among thousands of survivors confronting a different kind of crisis after the flood. The disaster destroyed homes and livelih...