Colorado man among the relief workers responding after flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border

Rescuers have managed to get in contact with one of the dozens of Americans missing after the devastating flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border. More than 1,000 people have already died, and thousands are still missing. Nearly 70 schools in northern Nepal were destroyed, along with homes, businesses and entire communities. One man from Colorado who is living in Nepal is now at the scene to help.

Nikolas Lehnert, the brother of CBS Colorado First Alert Meteorologist Alex Lehnert, took an 11-hour motorcycle ride to a village called Daanchhi with a group of relief workers in hopes of setting up some relief and recovery sites.

 Lehnert realizes the road to recovery will be a long one for the country that lost so many people in last week's flash flooding.

"The main valley where the flood was was totally washed away," he said in a video interview.

Heman, a Nepali friend who joined Lehnert on the interview, said "The devastation is really huge. The lives lost are a lot, big in numbers that we still don't know fully."

"There's a region south called Chitwan on the Indian border, and they're finding bodies down there. So it spans the whole width of the country," Lehnert said.

Getting relief supplies where they need to go has been a chaotic process for the government so far.

"They're scrambling, trying to control the situation," Lehnert said.

Heman said some families are having a particularly hard time because a lot of people don't know how to use their government's website to report who is missing.

"There are people that have lost nearly their entire life savings," Heman said. "Their house, their family members, and they're the only ones surviving, and they don't know what to do up ahead. They're the ones that are in need."

Their goal is to reach those communities.

Lehnert said it's hard to convey just how bad things are in the aftermath of the tragedy.

"With global disasters that happen like this, there's like a two-week window where the world is kind of watching, and then after two weeks, people just forget about it," he said. "So we have essentially another week to raise all the funds and means necessary to provide aid for the next six to nine months."

Lehnert and Heman are trying to raise enough money and get enough supplies while the world keeps their focus on this disaster before attention turns elsewhere.