Massive flash floods tore through communities along the Nepal-China border Wednesday, killing at least 160 people and leaving hundreds of tourists, workers and residents missing, officials said, in what may rank among the deadliest disasters in Nepal’s modern history.
Nepal police reported at least 157 confirmed deaths. China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported three deaths and 265 people missing in the Tibet region’s Gyirong County near the border, bringing the combined toll to at least 160. Officials cautioned that both figures remained preliminary as recovery efforts continued into the night.
The flood originated when an avalanche of ice and rock blocked the Lhende River, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi, roughly 20 kilometers northeast of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing, according to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, which based its assessment on satellite imagery from Planet Labs. The resulting surge hit the settlement of Timure first before sweeping downstream through Syaphrubesi and other communities in Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts.
What We Know So Far
Figures on the number of people missing varied across official sources. Nepal’s tourism board said 403 people were reported missing, including 341 foreign nationals. A separate statement from Nepal’s Prime Minister’s Office cited a total of 391 foreign nationals and 44 security personnel missing, a figure that does not fully align with the tourism board’s count. Nepal police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle said at least 28 police officials were among the missing.
Tourism board spokesperson Sunil Sharma said 133 of the missing were Indian nationals on pilgrimage toward Mount Kailash in Tibet, a site sacred to Hindus. He said 47 missing were American, 34 Australian, 33 British and 24 Canadian. At least 62 missing Nepali citizens were trekkers in the Gosaikunda Lake area of Rasuwa, where the disaster coincided with the local Janai Purnima festival. South Korea’s government said either eight or nine of its citizens working on a hydropower plant were missing, with the exact figure differing between reports. Malaysia’s foreign ministry said it had lost contact with 11 citizens believed to be in Rasuwa, and Russia’s embassy in Nepal said four of its citizens in the affected area were unaccounted for.
Accounts also differed on the seismic activity connected to the disaster. The U.S. Geological Survey initially reported a magnitude 4.4 earthquake early Wednesday about 66 kilometers north of Kathmandu, near the border, before later reclassifying the event as a magnitude 5.2 landslide rather than an earthquake. The German Research Centre for Geosciences separately recorded a 4.4 magnitude quake approximately seven minutes before security camera footage on the Chinese side of the border captured people fleeing the floodwaters. Nepali officials initially suggested an earthquake may have triggered a glacial collapse, though later assessments from disaster authorities and climate researchers pointed primarily to an ice and rock avalanche blocking the river.
At least 19 bridges and nearly 40 kilometers of road were swept away nationwide. The flood also destroyed nine hydropower projects and an equal number of commercial bank branches, according to the Kathmandu Post. More than 300 vehicles and trucks waiting at a customs checkpoint in Timure were washed away, and officials said Rasuwa’s electricity remained out due to damaged hydropower infrastructure.
Survivor Accounts
Survivors described the flood’s sudden, overwhelming force. Keshav Prasad Baral, 68, said he tried to pull his wife to safety on their home’s terrace as mud surged in, but she was swept away before he could get her clear; he was rescued by helicopter four or five hours later. Rajendra Dhungana, chief customs officer in Rasuwa, said he initially thought an earthquake had struck when he felt the ground shake, then saw what looked like a nearly 100 meter wave crash down and destroy the Timure market within moments.
Tula Bahadur BK, a health worker in Rasuwa, described devastation everywhere he looked, saying riverside settlements had been completely swept away and that five of his own relatives were missing. Resident Shoyam Rajbhandari, describing the flood’s arrival in Dhunge bazaar, said the market was destroyed within half an hour as people were just beginning their workday, adding that the true number of dead or missing remained unknown.
Why This Matters
The disaster strikes a region already scarred by a similar flood along the same river system in July of last year, which killed at least 11 people and destroyed the Miteri Bridge connecting Nepal and China, with affected areas still not fully recovered. Security officials and disaster experts said Wednesday’s flood could surpass Nepal’s benchmark disaster, the 1993 floods in Sarlahi, Rautahat and Makawanpur that killed 1,400 people, depending on how many of the hundreds still missing are ultimately confirmed dead.
Climate researchers at the Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said hydrological data showed the exceptional speed of the flood wave, with water levels on the Trishuli River rising as much as nine meters in half an hour. Disaster risk specialist Saswata Sanyal said the Lhende River has now flooded twice in 14 months, both times linked to glacial instability, and emphasized the need for early warning systems in what he called a warming Himalaya. Research has found glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region are melting at an accelerating rate, with ice loss rates roughly doubling since 2000 due to rising global temperatures.
The disaster has exposed significant gaps in Nepal’s flood warning infrastructure. Automatic flood monitoring stations installed in the upper Bhotekoshi were swept away by the flood before they could transmit any alert, according to Binod Parajuli, a senior hydrologist at Nepal’s Flood Forecasting Division. Information about the flood did not reach his division until 8:56 a.m. Wednesday, relayed through district and national disaster authorities, and a warning was issued to downstream areas within four minutes, though it arrived too late for many communities in Rasuwa itself. Parajuli said the warning likely helped save hundreds of lives further downstream in Nuwakot even though it failed to reach people closer to the flood’s source in time.
Anil Pokhrel, former executive chief of Nepal’s disaster management authority, said similar cross-border warning failures have occurred before without being adequately addressed, and called for Nepal’s Foreign Ministry to establish a reliable mechanism with Chinese authorities to share early warnings when floods originate on the Tibetan side. Nepal and China signed a memorandum of understanding on disaster risk cooperation in 2019, but Wednesday’s disaster exposed a gap between that formal agreement and any functioning real-time warning mechanism. Following the flood, Nepali and Chinese hydrology officials held a virtual meeting Wednesday afternoon, after which China agreed to notify Nepal as soon as water levels begin rising on its side of the border going forward.
International Response
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Nepal’s leadership and pledged humanitarian assistance, saying Indian teams were closely coordinating on rescue and relief efforts. Nepali government spokesperson Sasmit Pokharel said Nepal had formally requested rescue assistance from both India and China. United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said U.N. bodies were deploying to meet what he called a clearly massive humanitarian need. Australia, Britain, the European Union, Finland, France, Norway and Switzerland issued a joint statement expressing solidarity with Nepal and urging affected residents to follow local safety guidance.
The U.S. State Department said it was aware of Americans affected by the floods and was tracking the situation closely. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the floods absolutely devastating and said Canada was closely following developments. Flood alerts were also issued in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, where authorities in Bihar said they had evacuated about 5,000 people across six districts, with plans to evacuate as many as 12,000 in total.
What Happens Next
Rescue helicopters continued ferrying survivors out of hard-hit areas including Syaphrubesi and Timure, though officials said aircraft could not land in some zones given the river’s continued elevated flow. Search and recovery operations were expected to continue for days given the scale of destruction and the number of people still unaccounted for.
Nepali officials face pressure to address the structural warning gaps exposed by the disaster, including Parajuli’s call for expanded real-time sensor networks capable of detecting flood risks before they cross into Nepali territory. Whether the renewed cooperation agreement reached with China on Wednesday translates into a functioning early warning system before the next flood season remains an open question, given that a similar formal agreement has existed since 2019 without preventing Wednesday’s disaster.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press, Reuters and the Kathmandu Post
