Flash floods triggered by a glacier collapse along the Nepal-China border have killed nearly 600 people and left thousands unaccounted for, including 90 Americans, while Nepal's government turns away international search-and-rescue offers.
Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority confirmed Friday that 579 people had died in the catastrophe, with 1,924 still missing on the Nepalese side alone. Chinese authorities reported five dead and 558 unaccounted for on the Tibetan side of the border. The Red Cross estimated approximately 90,000 people had been impacted by the flooding, which CBS News reported began Wednesday morning when bedrock beneath a glacier gave way, sending rock, ice, and meltwater surging down river valleys and destroying everything in its path.
The rockfall was so violent it registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event. Within seconds, rivers swelled into walls of mud and debris that flattened buildings, bridges, and infrastructure at the Gyirong Port border crossing and the nearby Nepalese village of Timure, a community of more than 1,500 people with government offices, hotels, banks, and schools.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Friday morning on Fox News that 90 Americans were among those still missing. Five Americans had been rescued. President Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, called the flooding "terrible to see" and said U.S. officials had spoken with Nepalese leaders and offered to provide "anything they want." The initial reports of missing Americans have only grown worse as the scope of the disaster becomes clearer.
Even as the death toll climbed and foreign nationals from at least 19 countries remained unaccounted for, Nepal's foreign ministry rejected offers of international search-and-rescue assistance. Lok Bahadur Chhetri, a spokesperson for Nepal's foreign ministry, told the New York Post that the country's own security agencies were handling operations.
"The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don't require such help."
That decision drew scrutiny. Dinesh Bhattarai, a former Nepali ambassador to the United Nations, suggested the refusal may stem from the geographic sensitivity of the Rasuwa district, which sits near the Chinese border. South Korea, which had nine nationals missing and ten stranded at a hydropower plant, pledged $1 million in humanitarian aid while continuing to negotiate with Kathmandu for access.
For families of the missing, Nepal's insistence on going it alone is cold comfort. The Isha Foundation, a volunteer-run group founded by Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru Vasudev, reported that approximately 80 of its pilgrims from 19 countries were unaccounted for, including 22 Americans. The group had organized a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, a site sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, and others, with roughly 1,000 participants total. The pilgrims were crossing from China into Nepal through the Gyirong Port immigration complex when the flood hit.
Leslie Crespi, a community liaison for the Isha Foundation, spoke by phone from McMinnville, Tennessee. She said the foundation had run these pilgrimages for 21 years without incident.
"In those 21 years, we have never lost a life."
Crespi described the agonizing wait for news:
"At this point we are awaiting word. We have done as much outreach as we can through the State Department, through the embassy."
Among the families caught in limbo was Deepak Dandu, a U.S. citizen whose wife, Sridevi Vejella, had been on the Isha Foundation pilgrimage. The foundation told him she was part of a group present at the Gyirong Port immigration complex when the flood struck. As of Friday, her status remained unknown.
Dandu was preparing to board a flight to Hyderabad, India, to be with his son.
"He is going through a lot, hearing all the news. I think he is really upset. I'm trying to go there and be with him."
The U.S. Embassy in Nepal issued a statement saying it was "delivering a range of supplies requested by the Government of Nepal and is working with Nepal to ensure that assistance reaches the people who need it." Catholic Relief Services, working through implementing partner Caritas Nepal, planned to deliver more than 2.5 metric tons of food supplies, 500 blankets, 500 mosquito nets, and 500 insulating foam sheets for temporary shelter flooring to two school locations in Rasuwa. The embassy said subsequent supply shipments were already in the works.
Karbir Gaire, a customs officer stationed in Timure, the closest Nepalese village to the Chinese border, was at his office around 8 a.m. Wednesday when the ground began to shake. What followed gave him and his colleagues roughly ten seconds to live or die.
"Right after the shake, I noticed a black storm coming towards us. We all immediately started running out and within a few seconds, we were climbing uphill on the opposite side of our office building. I think those 10 or so seconds saved some of us."
Gaire, who spoke from Kathmandu after returning to his family, said 15 of his colleagues remained missing. He compared the scene to something out of a disaster film. As earlier reporting detailed, the scale of destruction at the border crossing was immediate and overwhelming.
"It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don't call it a flood, it was a tsunami."
Satellite images told the story in stark before-and-after contrast. Images from April 2024 showed the Gyirong Port border facility intact. Post-flood images from August 27, 2026 showed it decimated. A separate set of satellite images showed the Langtang Lirung mountain valley on June 25, 2026 and again on August 26, the day the flooding struck, revealing the scale of the glacier collapse.
Rescue operations had not paused, but they faced a fresh danger. Nepal Police issued an alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibetan side of the border was overflowing. Security personnel and relief workers were directed to stay on high alert and move to safe locations if necessary. It remained unclear whether this concern was connected to a barrier lake that had formed upstream after the initial collapse, or a separate dam.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that the barrier lake sat at an elevation of 9,680 feet, roughly 3,280 feet above Gyirong Port and more than six miles away. The risk of flooding was deemed high. Reuters later reported that CCTV characterized the flood risks as "manageable," though the basis for that assessment was not detailed.
On the ground, the Nepali Army was working to reach dozens of people believed trapped inside a flooded hydropower tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa. Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet, a Nepali Army spokesperson, told the Associated Press that conditions were dire.
"It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud. Our first priority is rescuing the stranded people."
Nepal Police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle said the rescue operation "hasn't stopped," but was continuing under high alert. More than 3,700 people had been rescued in Nepal so far, with more than 3,000 airlifted by helicopter to Kathmandu and other locations. The death toll had climbed steadily from the initial reports, and the number of missing remained staggering.
Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria who was based in Bangladesh, analyzed satellite imagery of the collapse. He said a lower portion of the glacier had broken away entirely.
"Satellite images made it look like someone cut with a huge knife through the whole lower part."
Steiner said the Hindu Kush Himalayan region was warming rapidly, driving changes in glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and mountain slopes. Approximately 78 percent of the glacier area sits between roughly 14,760 and 19,685 feet above sea level, elevations increasingly exposed to rising temperatures.
His assessment was blunt: "What happened yesterday is unfortunately the new normal. It's going to get worse from here onwards."
Some local Nepalese media outlets put the number of unaccounted-for people as high as 12,000, though that figure had not been confirmed by any officials. The gap between the official missing count of roughly 2,500 and the unconfirmed local reports underscored how much remained unknown about the full scope of the disaster.
President Trump described the physical destruction in concrete terms, telling reporters that "strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks." The United States was delivering aid and coordinating with Kathmandu. But for the families of the missing, American and otherwise, the question was whether Nepal's refusal to accept foreign rescue teams would cost lives that could still be saved.
When a government tells grieving families it doesn't need help finding their loved ones, it had better be right.
