In the final week of August, Rachel Clayton was in India reporting on a fire that had broken out in a maternity ward in Pakistan and left several babies dead.  

Then the newswires started flashing: something was happening in Nepal.  

When clips of what looked like a massive landslide or flood demolishing a border crossing hit social media, Clayton knew she, as the ABC’s South Asia correspondent, had to get on the ground as soon as possible.  

That night, she was filing for Australia’s morning news while she packed her bags and her team organised flights, accommodation and local fixers (the “lifeline” of international journalists).  

By the following afternoon, Clayton was at a Kathmandu hospital, watching photos of those already declared missing being put on display.  

Over a month since the catastrophic flash floods and landslides hit Nepal, more than 1000 people have been confirmed dead and thousands more remain missing. 

“Watching people in real time find out that their husbands and their children and their parents died is something that will stay with me for a very long time, because it is quite a harrowing thing to watch in real life,” she tells PIJI. 

“You are capturing that on camera, and you really wrestle with your own morals and ethics in those sorts of situations.  

“I’m sure hardened correspondents may not have that sort of reflex anymore, but I think that was particularly difficult for me.” 

That internal struggle is something Clayton had to grapple with for the 10 days she spent reporting from Nepal, a task which was also no easy feat physically or logistically. 

Her team focused on covering the Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts, which had been among the hardest hit by flash floods.  

To access certain towns in Nuwakot, Clayton says the team had to drive across two mountain passes, a trip which would often take three hours in the morning and up to five hours in the busier afternoon period as cars and army trucks fought for space on the mountain roads. 

Amidst all this travel, Clayton had work to do; preparing for and presenting multiple daily live radio and TV crosses, adding to a live blog and contributing to digital stories – all while researching, planning, building relationships, conducting interviews and navigating different time zones. 

Reporting from a fresh disaster zone also comes with an element of danger. 

Clayton recalls an instance when an interview with a local woman who had lost her home and business in the floods was interrupted by panicked men “running and shouting something in Nepali”.   

Then came the translation: “The water is coming.” 

Suddenly, everyone was running for higher ground, with Clayton witnessing people pushing others into the mud and zooming by on scooters to get past faster. 

“It was like abject terror on everyone’s face because we were at a very low-lying flat area that was probably almost a kilometre away from higher ground,” she says. 

“So everyone started running, but you were running for quite a while to get anywhere near high ground, and on either side of this path we’re running on is mud covering almost three storeys of homes.” 

“It was probably the most terrifying thing I’ve experienced because by that point you’d seen every video, you’d seen that water from every angle possible, and all you can think is, ‘Is this about to happen again, to me, right now, because I’ve chosen to be here to report on it?’” 

Fortunately, the event turned out to be a false alarm, but the memory of being surrounded by that fear remains clear in Clayton’s mind. 

Political roadblocks 

Covering these stories could easily be overwhelming, but Clayton says working with a supportive team eased the load. 

While in “constant communication” with producers in Australia, Clayton was accompanied to Nepal by her India-based producers and cameraman. They were quickly joined in the country by fellow ABC journalists including Natalie Whiting and Meghna Bali. 

Clayton also credits ABC China correspondent Allyson Horn as instrumental in leading the team in Nepal from afar. 

Based in Beijing, Horn was simultaneously facing challenges in her efforts to report the effects of the same disaster on the Tibetan side of the border. 

She says footage of the flash floods was quickly scrubbed from the internet in China, and the country maintained its traditionally strict control on access to Tibet for journalists. 

Speaking to PIJI a month after the event, Horn had still not been granted access to the disaster-affected region, although authorities had recently taken a small group of foreign journalists on a “heavily controlled” trip. 

Even while responding to the disaster, Chinese authorities wanted to control what the world saw and suppress any potential for dissent in Tibet, which resulted in the withholding of information such as death toll and missing figures for weeks, she says. 

With most information in the wake of the disaster released by Chinese authorities and state media without avenues for independent verification, Horn had to report with “caveats”. 

“You report what you can report and provide your audiences with the context around that and help them to try and understand why we might be seeing different things coming out of Nepal as opposed to what we’re seeing from Tibet,” she says. 

“That’s not to say that what Chinese officials are saying isn’t true, I’m not trying to insinuate that. 

“But we do have to let our audiences know that this is information that we can’t independently verify because we can’t go there on the ground, and because … all the communication channels are monitored within China and Tibet, so we can’t even talk to people freely.” 

Horn says these restrictions meant the voices of the people affected by the disaster in Tibet went unheard, leaving a “crucial” piece of the story missing. 

The heart of the story 

For Horn, who has reported on the ground in the aftermath of several major natural disasters around the world, the people affected are always central to the story. 

“[These events are] catastrophic in a way that your reporting will probably never be able to accurately reflect, and I think keeping that at the front of your mind at every single moment is really crucial,” she says. 

“This isn’t a story. This is real people and real people’s lives.” 

As difficult as it may be to take out a camera and pen in the face of such distress, Clayton focuses on the fact that she is there to do her job, 

She says the people affected by natural disasters want their stories told as attention brings much-needed resources, but journalists should work “respectfully” to ensure they are not “re-traumatising” people. 

“The whole point of being a journalist is to – it sounds very cheesy – show people we have this shared humanity; that this person could have been you, that the person that they lost could have been your person,” Clayton says. 

“It’s human to feel bad about filming someone at the lowest point of their life, and if you feel not great about it, it’s not a bad thing. I think it just shows that you have a soul.” 

– Sezen Bakan