She kept calling, but her husband didn’t answer the phone.
The woman, who CNN gave her pseudonym Lili, said her husband was talking to a friend at 8:27 a.m. Wednesday. That was about 10 minutes before a massive landslide hit Nepal’s mountains, triggering an explosive flood wave that ripped through the border area with China and into Nepal.
Lili has not heard from her husband, who was working on a Chinese construction project in the South Asian country, since then.
Her family is one of many across China desperate for information about their loved ones who were in the area at the time of the disaster, including dozens of Chinese nationals who are believed to have been working across the border in Nepal.
These families are now wondering if rescue efforts in Nepal are reaching their loved ones and are urgently seeking more positive updates on the progress of these efforts from within China.
Family members of several of these workers traveled to Lhasa, the capital of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, on Monday to seek more information from the government-backed construction company that employs their relatives, urging the company to step up rescue efforts and share more information.
The families are also asking local authorities in Tibet to help speed up rescue operations at the project site in Nepal, according to a draft letter to authorities seen by CNN.
Officials in both China and Nepal say more than 1,000 people are confirmed dead and thousands more missing after Wednesday’s disaster. Families in both countries and around the world are desperate for news of their loved ones in the region, which is also a popular route for foreign tourists.
Learn more about calls for greater transparency here.
