Three days after a devastating tsunami-style surge of water and debris tore through cross-border Himalayan communities, rescue teams in Nepal and China’s Tibet Autonomous Region continued their frantic search for thousands of unaccounted-for people on Saturday. By Friday, official counts put the total number of missing people at more than 2,400, with rescuers having already recovered 586 fatalities — several of which washed downstream as far as northern India. The catastrophic disaster has reshaped lives across the border region, leaving survivors with nothing and forcing agonizing waits for news of loved ones.
The high-altitude Himalayan border region is dotted with large-scale hydropower and energy infrastructure projects, and Nepal’s national disaster management authority confirmed that 933 workers from local hydropower facilities had been added to the growing missing persons list. They join hundreds of trekkers and Hindu pilgrims who were en route to Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash, one of the region’s most popular religious destinations, when the flood struck.
Survivors recount scenes of total destruction, with entire riverside settlements washed away in a matter of minutes. “All the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing left,” survivor Buddhi Ram Dangol told Agence France-Presse. For families of the missing, uncertainty has turned into days of agonizing waiting. Samjhana Thing, who has not heard from her brother since the flood hit, said, “We don’t know anything. Hopefully he is in a safe place.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross described the scale of trauma from Wednesday’s disaster as “enormous”, estimating that as many as 93,000 people across the region have been displaced or otherwise affected. Officials warn the final death toll will almost certainly rise as search teams reach more remote cut-off areas. Widespread destruction has severed supply routes, leaving emergency teams and trapped survivors facing dwindling stockpiles of clean drinking water and food. Compounding the already dangerous search mission is the persistent threat of secondary flooding. The initial surge of ice and mud created large new natural debris dams across mountain valleys, creating unstable temporary lakes that continue to threaten response teams. On Friday, Nepali police issued an urgent order for all rescuers to evacuate high-risk zones immediately after receiving reports that a new debris dam on the Tibetan side of the border had burst. In Tibet, Chinese authorities paused rescue operations in the worst-hit Gyirong county due to the risk of new flooding, before announcing the threat had eased. State news agency Xinhua reported Saturday morning that two trapped villagers had been pulled from the debris in the area.
On the Nepali side of the border, military teams are working to extract dozens of trapped workers from the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A hydropower project, one of the largest energy facilities in the flood zone. Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet told AFP that two rescue helicopters have been deployed to the site, but treacherous conditions and destroyed access routes have made locating the tunnel entrance extremely challenging. So far, 350 workers and local residents have been evacuated to safety from the area, but more than 100 people remain trapped, he added.
Workers rescued from other hydropower projects along the Trishuli Valley described a disaster that unfolded with terrifying, unexpected speed. Buddha Tamang, a dam worker who was airlifted to safety Thursday after being stranded for more than 24 hours, said he only survived because he was inside a tunnel at the time the flood hit. “The senior officers working on the other side, they were all swept away,” Tamang said.
By Friday, Nepal’s official death toll stood at 579, with 1,924 people — including 517 foreign nationals — still unaccounted for, a near-doubling of the previous missing count of 977. Across the border in Tibet, which remains closed to most foreign journalists, state-run Xinhua reported seven confirmed deaths and 555 missing people as of Saturday. Chinese authorities have already evacuated 555 stranded tourists and 499 local residents from high-risk flood zones in Tibet. India has recovered seven bodies from rivers that originate in Nepal, all believed to be victims of the cross-border disaster.
Dozens of international Hindu devotees are among the missing, as many were traveling along the popular pilgrimage route to Mount Kailash. Sivaranjani Muthunathan, a 46-year-old pilgrim, was traveling by bus with 56 other devotees toward the Chinese border when the group stopped, initially assuming they were caught in a routine traffic jam. “Then there was fog, smoke, something that seemed to suddenly engulf us,” Muthunathan told AFP Friday, sharing mobile footage she recorded of a raging torrent of mud and water surging toward her vehicle. One by one, vehicles around the bus were swept away or buried under falling debris. “One by one, we also climbed out through the driver’s side,” then scrambled up a nearby hillside to safety, she said.