Nuwakot, Aug. 29 -- On a hillside in Dabile of Bidur Municipality-10 stands a lone house with a corrugated zinc-sheet roof. There are no other houses nearby. From the house, the only view below is of a settlement devastated by Wednesday's flooding of the Bhotekoshi River. Concrete houses lie submerged, while those on the opposite bank stand intact but eerily deserted.

Yet since the flood, the small house has rarely been without guests.

On August 16, the day the flood struck, 31 students and teachers who escaped the disaster spent the night there. The house became a safe haven for those who fled the nearby Uttargaya Public Secondary School.

Since then, it has become a refuge for people arriving in search of relatives missing in the floo...