Rescuers waded through mud on Thursday looking for more than 1,400 people missing after flash floods and landslides hit the Nepal-Tibet border. Entire villages were swept away. Two days after the disaster, Nepali police put the death toll at 469.
The US Geological Survey said a glacial collapse sent a huge flow of icy debris down the valley. Its first report had logged a magnitude 4.4 earthquake, but analysis of the seismic recordings showed a “glacial collapse and debris flow” instead. Environmental historian Ruth Gamble of Australia’s La Trobe University described the surge as “like an inland tsunami”. It traveled nearly 170 kilometres south into Nepal.
The missing
In Nepal, another 910 people were out of contact, 517 of them foreign tourists. Beijing said 100 Chinese citizens not counted in that tally were also missing. Indians make up the largest group of missing foreigners. The United States said 90 of its citizens could not be reached. Nepal’s tourism board listed others from Australia, Britain, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and South Korea.
Many of the missing are trekkers or Hindu pilgrims returning from Tibet’s Mount Kailash. Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru, weeping in a video message from Tibet, said a whole group of devotees had been in a building at an immigration post when the flood arrived. “This is a terrible and extraordinary event,” he said.
On the Chinese side, state media said the mudslide at Gyirong Port in Tibet killed three people and left 558 missing, 260 of them foreigners.
Trapped in a tunnel
Nepal’s army said it was working Friday to reach about 100 people trapped inside a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydropower project, which the flood swamped. “Our focus is in search and rescue of people,” army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said. The prime minister’s office said 350 people had already been pulled out of the area. Soldiers elsewhere used sniffer dogs to find bodies under the dirt.
Omkar Joshi, a 35-year-old Nepali customs agent rescued from a hilltop in the border town of Timure, spoke to AFP. “It is a giant graveyard,” he said. “All that is left are sand and pebbles, soaked red by human blood.”
Relief and the risk of a second flood
Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited the area on Thursday to oversee relief work, state media said. Xinhua reported that officials in Tibet mobilised nearly 800 emergency workers, with sniffer dogs and speed boats. Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah toured some of the hardest-hit areas and told local authorities to “provide immediate relief to displaced families” and open blocked roads. The Dalai Lama said he would “pray for all those who have lost their lives.”
Another flood is possible. Debris still blocks the valley upstream on the border river. “With a blockage still lodged upstream on the Nepal-China border river, authorities warn a second flood may occur,” said Qianggong Zhang of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu. Kathmandu’s Flood Forecasting Division issued a special notice on Thursday about a growing lake behind the landslide debris and urged extreme caution.
