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The death toll from devastating flash floods in Nepal and China’s Tibet region has risen to 1,225, while at least 4,757 people remain missing across the two countries.
In Nepal, rescuers battled heavy rain on Wednesday as they continued clearing debris in an effort to reach workers trapped inside a tunnel at a hydropower project on the Bhotekoshi River. Racing against both time and worsening weather, rescuers are working to bring the trapped workers out alive.
According to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, cited by the Kathmandu Post, the death toll in Nepal had reached 1,204 by Wednesday evening, with 4,216 people still missing. Around 1.6 million people in the border districts of Rasuwa and Nuwakot have been affected by the disaster.
China Daily reported that 21 people had died in the flash floods in Tibet, while 541 remained missing.
Nepal Prime Minister Balendra Shah said the disaster was linked to climate change and called for the issue to receive greater attention internationally.
The disaster began shortly after 8am local time on August 26, when a massive section of a glacier from the Langtang Lirung mountain crashed into the Lende River in the Lende Valley near the Nepal-Tibet border. The resulting flash flood surged downstream through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers, inundating towns and valleys in the border region and leaving widespread destruction.
When the glacier collapsed into the Lende Valley, Nepal’s Department of Mines and Geology recorded what initially appeared to be a magnitude-4.4 earthquake. Lok Bijay Adhikari, head of the department’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Centre, said the tremor did not match the characteristics of a conventional earthquake, so authorities did not issue the usual public warning.
The US Geological Survey also initially recorded the event as a magnitude-4.4 earthquake but later revised its assessment, attributing the seismic activity to the glacier collapse.
The powerful flash flood, which swept down steep mountain slopes from elevations of several thousand metres, completely destroyed 41 concrete bridges in northern Nepal and damaged four others.
In Nuwakot alone, 1,267 houses were completely destroyed and another 1,253 were partially damaged.
The full extent of the devastation has yet to emerge.