The "miraculous green house" of the Pyakurel family, in Nuwakot, Nepal, became a symbol of survival after resisting alone a devastating torrent of water, mud and debris that destroyed everything around it during last week's floods. The video of the family watching helplessly from the third-floor balcony as the fury of the flood crashed against the house went viral on social media, but the property remained standing while the waves of mud dragged the neighboring constructions away.
The floods were caused by the collapse of a massive glacier in the Himalayas region, between Nepal and Tibet. Chhatra Bahadur Pyakurel, 67 years old, said he had just left his grandson at the school bus stop and returned home when the tragedy hit the region.
A week after the disaster, calculations revealed that the landslide in the Himalayas released energy far superior to that of the Hiroshima bomb, evidencing the catastrophic magnitude of the natural event that hit the region.
