DANG, Aug 29: Five members of a family in Baghchaur Municipality-4 of Salyan district were killed when their house collapsed on Tuesday night. The house belonging to Ram Bahadur BK collapsed when the family was asleep. Along with BK, 40, his wife Ramkali, 35, son Ruplal, 4, daughter Ganga, 7, and another daughter Parmila, 6, were killed in the house collapse, according to District Police Office (DPO), Salyan.The sole survivor is BK's nine-year-old daughter Sunita. “Sunita sustained a minor injury in the forehead but her condition is normal,” informed Deputy Superintended of Police (DSP) Bir Bahadur Shahi, chief of the DPO.According to police, the two-storey house collapsed after a pillar broke .
House collapse kills four in Okhaldhunga
The whole family was sleep in the upper floor of the stone house. First, a wall of the house collapsed, weakening the pillar which subsequently broke. The house collapsed at around 10 pm.After the pillar broke, the whole family fell to the ground floor. Walls collapsed upon them. “All five of them died on the spot,” added DSP Shahi.Police suspect that the walls could have been weakened following incessant rainfall in the past few days.The house is in an isolated location. There is only one neighboring house and it is abandoned. Sunita attempted to pull her sister out of the rubble, but in vain. So she ran some 30 minutes to her grandfather's house, which is the nearest one that is inhabited, to seek help.“When she returned with the help, there was no one left alive,” said DSP Shahi.Sunita is now devastated. “I was also buried in the debris but I managed to pull myself out . I tried to find the others of my family but I only found my younger sister Pramila,” she recalled, sobbing. “Pramila was pleading to me to save her. But I couldn't pull her out from under a massive stone . In desperation I went to seek help .”
Sunita is now sheltering at her grandfather's house.
