Fatalities from deadly flash floods in the border region between Nepal and Tibet are now over 1 000 as hundreds more remain unaccounted for on the seventh day of an arduous rescue operation. As of Tuesday, Nepal’s verified death toll is 987; in Tibet, the toll stands at 16, bringing the overall figure to 1,003. Approximately 4,462 persons are listed as unaccounted for.
Based on Nepal’s disaster management agency 3 916 people within the country had gone missing, including 583 foreigners from more than thirty different countries. The Chinese government has listed 546 people as missing in the border region of Gyirong County in Tibet. Many Indian citizens, as well as a number of Americans Ukrainians Malaysians Australians British people and others who had been trekking, working or undertaking pilgrimages in the region are also missing.
The floods were caused by a glacial burst high in the mountains which sent a huge torrent of water ice rocks and mud rushing down the steep Himalayan valleys last Wednesday. The torrent has swept away bridges, roads and whole villages, devastated power projects and cut off communities. Rains of centimetres thick plumes of mud and earth continue to block off routes and rescue efforts are depending heavily on helicopters and makeshift roads.
Rescue teams were clearing wreckage and blowing up blocked tunnels at the hydropower plants where hundreds are feared trapped in several districts. Per the Nepalese government, more than 11,800 have been rescued. Electricity and telecommunications have been re-established in some regions, though new flood warnings issued for districts like Nuwakot and Rasuwa threaten to hamper rescue operations.
Meanwhile, morgues are full to capacity and authorities have started burying unidentified victims, while requesting DNA samples from the family of foreigners reported missing. Prime Minister Balendra Shah spoke of the devastation in stark terms, asserting that thousands of people have been displaced, lost relatives and livelihoods. He has called for greater international focus on the impacts of climate in the Himalayas, where warming is making glaciers and high-altitude lakes more unstable. The cost of rebuilding will be in the billions for a country with an already strained economy. The human toll, of course, is far worse off the border as well. Dead bodies have been dragged out of rivers flowing into India; embassies are still compiling lists of their citizens missing.
For those eagerly watching for news, the delayed recovery process in rugged, mud-filled wilderness has been agonizingly slow. Rescue workers speak of crawling through pitch-black tunnels filled with rubble and shimmying over boulders in unsafe environments days after the initial earthquake. As the search for survivors and dead continues, the disaster highlights the fragility of mountain settlements in the face of abrupt glacial failures.
Although no one doubts that the search is: it is already clear that the disaster has reawakened long-term questions of early warning, infrastructure and climate change adaptation in the region. But for now, the concern is simple: to find those missing and to help the thousands whose lives have been turned upside down by one of the worst floods to hit the Himalayas in living memory.