At least 469 people have died, and at least 1,500 people remain missing across Nepal and China’s Tibet region after a glacial collapse sent a mountain of mud and rock into a Himalayan river, triggering catastrophic flooding across local towns and valleys, authorities in Kathmandu have said. The devastating Bhotekoshi flood struck the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border region, with some of the worst damage in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, immediately south of the Chinese border. Television images showed collapsed homes, floating cars and a metal bridge being washed away, while witnesses said the waters engulfed entire villages.
Search and rescue teams have been wading through the region looking for victims and missing people, but efforts have proven challenging since many roads and bridges have also been damaged due to the flood. Here’s what we know about the latest rescue efforts and the victims: Officials initially believed that a magnitude 4.4 earthquake could have triggered the downstream floods on Wednesday morning. However, several experts and the United States Geological Survey have confirmed that “the seismic event” was a consequence of “a glacial collapse and debris flow that caused subsequent catastrophic impacts downstream” – rather than the other way around.
A glacial collapse is the detachment of a large mass of glacier ice from its bed – sometimes involving millions of cubic metres of ice, rock, and water – that can transform into a highly mobile ice-rich avalanche or debris flow. This collapse is not a formally defined scientific term in glaciology, but is widely used to describe the event. Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said the “glacier-inclusive flood” occurred in the Lhende Khola (river) due to “an ice-rock avalanche on the Nepali side”, according to Prakash Pokhrel, a geologist at the authority.
The initial surge entered the Lhende Khola — which feeds into the Bhotekoshi and then the Trishuli rivers — carrying floodwaters south through Nepal. Water levels in the Trishuli reportedly rose by as much as 9 metres (27ft) in just 30 minutes. According to Nepalese police, the death toll from the floods as of Friday morning rose to 469 people.
At least three people have also died in the neighbouring Tibet region. Official nationality counts for the dead are still pending. Nepalese daily The Kathmandu Post reported that the bodies of the dead swept away by the floods are turning up far downstream, and local morgues are running out of space to store the bodies until they are identified.
But authorities have begun finding alternatives, like using buildings in the country’s health and science academies as temporary morgues. As the death toll continues to rise, the Post also reported on Friday that authorities in Nepal are working on solutions to bury unidentified bodies by assigning a tag number to each body, which will retain burial information. As of Friday morning, more than 1,500 people were missing in Nepal and China’s Tibet region.
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