Timor-Leste is reeling from record floods and people are just beginning to let it sink in

When the floods came, Markus dos Santos lost almost everything.

His wife and three children were all buried by a massive avalanche of mud and water which smashed into their house.

Markus remembers desperately scrabbling through the ruins, trying to pull his two young daughters to safety as they called for help.

“I remember my eldest daughter — I managed to climb up to where she was,” he told the ABC while staring at the wreckage of his house on the outskirts of Timor-Leste’s capital, Dili.