Dallas Couple Among 85 Americans Missing in Nepal

A Dallas couple, Deepak Ahuja, 60, and his wife Madhu Ahuja, 57, are among the Americans missing after last week's flash flood and mudslide on the Nepal-Tibet border, their family told CBS News Texas and the BBC.

The State Department said Thursday it was aware of roughly 90 Americans who may have been affected by the disaster. On Sunday, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told ABC News' "This Week" that approximately 85 Americans are unaccounted for and nine have been safely evacuated.

"We are currently unaware of any US citizen deaths at this time," Pigott said.

The Dallas Family

The Ahujas have lived in Dallas for more than 30 years and run businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to CBS News Texas. Madhu is a longtime CPA; Deepak is an architecture engineer. They have two daughters, Ashna and Shreya.

The couple had just finished a religious pilgrimage to Mount Kailash — a trip Deepak gave himself for his 60th birthday, his brother said — and were on their way back when the flood hit. Relatives said they were at the Gyirong Port immigration center on Wednesday morning.

"This trip was his 60th birthday gift to himself, so it was really important to him, and they actually finished their trip, so they were on their way back when this happened," Sushil Ahuja, Deepak's brother, told CBS News Texas.

"It's a whirlwind of emotion," he said. "We're trying to talk to people, channeling all avenues we can, but it's been really hard."

The daughters told CBS News Texas they had spoken with their parents about an hour and a half before the disaster, and that the family was supposed to reunite in Dallas that weekend. "We just love them a lot," they told the BBC. "We want them to come home."

The family says it has been left to work the phones itself. Relatives are preparing to travel to Nepal, some are already on the ground chasing leads, and the family is calling for better coordination between the US, Nepali and Chinese governments.

Other American Families

Radhika Sharma told the BBC her parents, Ramesh Sharma, 65, and Neelam Sharma, 64, US citizens who live in New York City, were also traveling to Mount Kailash. It was their first trip alone since retiring last year.

"The last we know is they were at the border at 8am, so about an hour before the floods," she said. "And we are hoping that they made it to the Tibet side." She has contacted the US embassies in Beijing and Kathmandu: "No one has any answers."

New Yorkers Amita Amin, 67, and Jitendra Manubhai Patel, 63, and Tejal Vyomesh Patel, 64, of New Jersey were on the same pilgrimage when they vanished, Newsday reported. Jitendra Patel's son, Sunny Patel, told Fox News he realized his father had been in the exact area after watching viral footage of the flood.

At least 77 of the people caught in the disaster were on a pilgrimage organized by the Isha Foundation, a non-profit headquartered in India with a base in McMinnville, Tennessee, the BBC reported. Among them was Prabhath Sajeepa, a US citizen who works for a California software company, according to his niece, Kavya Koulagi Jayatheertha.