KATHMANDU, Nepal (WAVY) – Floodwaters across Nepal and China have left nearly 4,500 people missing and more than 1,000 confirmed dead, according to the Associated Press.

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Disaster relief organizations have deployed and are delivering aid to heavily impacted communities. Workers with Portsmouth-based Mercy Chefs are currently on the ground delivering food supplies to families in the region.

Carl Ladd, chief global officer for Mercy Chefs, spoke while traveling back to Kathmandu following a food distribution event several hours away. He noted that while more roads are beginning to reopen, emergency crews are encountering additional families in despair as access expands.

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"It's definitely humbling and heartbreaking to see people just really mourning, really broken," Ladd said, adding, "there's a ton of loss."

Rather than providing individual hot meals, relief teams in the hardest-hit areas of Nepal are distributing grocery packs designed to feed a family for approximately one month. Ladd noted that the disaster "… disproportionately is affecting heavily impoverished populations. And so they had no margin, so what little they had before this flood, now is gone."

In addition to facing the loss or disappearance of family members, many residents remain uncertain about their livelihood.

"We brought groceries to a community yesterday that their occupation was retrieving river rocks out of the river," Ladd said. "Well, now those river rocks are 20 or 30 feet under mud and sediment."

Ladd emphasized that the suddenness of the flooding left residents without time to prepare.

"This one was a 30-foot wall of water that just obliterated everything in its path, and people had no warning," Ladd said, "so there's a level of trauma that comes with that."

Despite the widespread destruction, relief workers have witnessed moments of resilience among families. Ladd recalled seeing two young boys playing in the debris that had overtaken their home.

"They were having the time of their life playing in the mud that is their house," Ladd said. "You know, they were making mud balls and throwing it at each other. The resilience of children, I'm always amazed by in disasters."

While crews are using newly-opened roads, Mercy Chefs plans to secure a higher-capacity helicopter to reach remote, steep terrain that remains inaccessible by land.

To make a donation to Mercy Chefs to aid their disaster response, click here.

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