A glacier collapse in the Himalayas triggered catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border, killing nearly 600 people and leaving roughly 2,500 missing, including about 90 Americans, as rescuers struggle to reach survivors buried under walls of mud and debris.
Nepal's disaster-management authority put the death toll at 579 by Friday, while Nepali police offered a lower count of 553. China reported seven dead on its side of the border. The gap between the two Nepali figures remained unexplained, but the scale of the disaster was not in dispute: nearly 2,500 people were unaccounted for across both countries, and more than 100 remained trapped inside a hydropower tunnel in Nepal's hardest-hit Rasuwa district.
The disaster began Wednesday when bedrock beneath a glacier high in the Himalayan range gave way, dragging part of the glacier down with it. Scientists studying satellite images determined the rockfall registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, initially mistaken for an earthquake before the U.S. Geological Survey revised its assessment. Rocks and meltwater surged into valleys below, swelling rivers into a torrent that swept away buildings, bridges, and entire stretches of road in both Tibet and Nepal, the Associated Press reported.
Karbir Gaire, a customs officer stationed in Timure, the closest Nepali village to the Chinese border, home to about 1,500 people, was at his desk around 8 a.m. Wednesday when the ground shook. What followed was not a tremor. It was a wall of debris.
Gaire told reporters he looked outside and saw something he could barely process:
"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."
Fifteen of Gaire's colleagues are missing. He made it back to his family in Kathmandu. Speaking from there, he described the scene in terms that underscore the sheer velocity of the flood:
"It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don't call it a flood. It was a tsunami."
Gaire's account tracks with the scientific findings. Reuters reported that the ice-avalanche debris flow traveled at roughly 50 meters per second, extending more than 20 kilometers. Water levels on the Trishuli River at Galchhi rose by as much as nine meters within 30 minutes, destroying entire villages and cutting off communities. The flood's path covered more than 100 kilometers downstream, nearly reaching the Indian border.
The lower section of a glacier near Langtang Lirung peak broke off, triggering the avalanche. The ice fell from roughly 17,000 feet, the New York Post reported, creating an avalanche that destroyed at least 19 bridges and nearly 25 miles of road. Fifteen hydropower plants sustained damage, knocking out more than 400 megawatts of power. Hundreds of cargo trucks and imported electric vehicles were swept away in the torrent.
Nepal's army deployed to the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa district, where more than 100 people were believed trapped inside a tunnel. Soldiers had pulled 350 workers out so far, but the remaining rescues were complicated by the sheer volume of debris.
Army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet described the challenge in blunt terms:
"It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud."
Across Nepal, more than 3,700 people had been rescued by Friday. Nepal's disaster-management authority said 3,253 of them were airlifted by helicopter, an enormous logistical effort in mountainous terrain where roads had been obliterated. The death toll reached 579 even as the number of unaccounted-for people in Nepal nearly doubled to 1,924, with local residents added to the tally as information trickled in from remote areas.
On the Chinese side, 680 rescuers eventually reached the Gyirong border area by foot and via rafts after roads were destroyed. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showed footage of rescue teams rappelling into the devastated zone and calling out for survivors. Zou Mingqi, a rescue official, told state media what he found at the border-crossing area: "As far as I can see, it's nothing but debris." CCTV reported 554 people missing on the Chinese side.
Even as rescue teams worked to extract survivors, a new danger emerged. The flood created a lake more than 10 kilometers, about six miles, from Gyirong Port, sitting at an elevation of 2,950 meters. Nepali police issued a fresh alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibet side had burst. Security personnel and relief workers were told to stay on high alert and move to safe locations if necessary.
Rescue workers heading toward the disaster zone were temporarily ordered to stop Friday over fears the lake would release more water and debris. People in potentially affected areas were urged to move to higher ground.
Monitoring data from China's Ministry of Water Resources offered some relief: the lake had dwindled in size, with water levels dropping 10 meters, about 32 feet, from their Thursday morning high point. But the situation remained volatile, and nationals from more than 30 countries were among those still unaccounted for.
Nepal's tourism board said more than 500 foreigners were among the missing. About 90 Americans were unaccounted for. The U.S. State Department confirmed approximately 90 Americans may have been impacted and pledged $500,000 in humanitarian assistance through Catholic Relief Services, Fox News reported. Secretary Marco Rubio said the State Department stood ready to support Nepal's government with needed humanitarian assistance.
Indian spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev, known as Sadhguru, posted on X that 77 people returning from Mount Kailash with his Isha Foundation groups were at the immigration center in Gyirong when the flooding struck. Mount Kailash, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists, and others in Tibet, had drawn pilgrims from across South Asia, many of whom were at the border crossing when the torrent hit.
Vishnuram Ramaswamy, who works at a private company in the southern Indian city of Puducherry, said he spoke to his mother and two sisters Wednesday morning. They were on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash.
"This was the last we spoke to them. They have been unreachable since."
At least 133 Indian tourists on the Hindu pilgrimage were among those listed as missing, along with the dozens of Americans, the Washington Examiner reported.
Nepal on Friday reversed an earlier decision and announced it would allow foreign teams and experts to assist with rescue efforts. The Kathmandu Post, a leading English-language newspaper, reported the reversal came under pressure from other countries whose citizens remained unaccounted for. The initial refusal had drawn scrutiny as the scale of the disaster became clear and dozens of Americans went missing in the chaos.
International support was already arriving in other forms. Kanni Wignaraja, the United Nations development agency's regional director for Asia and the Pacific, highlighted one contribution that put larger, wealthier nations on notice:
"Sri Lanka has its own huge fiscal problems, but it has just sent $1 million immediately to the Nepal government."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU stood ready to mobilize further assistance. The Dalai Lama, in a statement carried by Fox News, connected the disaster to a pattern: "Since this region has seen calamities in the past as well, these are certainly symptoms of a deeper underlying cause, whether climate change or other factors."
Scientists studying the collapse pointed to the same concern. Simon Cox, chief scientist for New Zealand's Mountains to Sea program, told Reuters that "climate change is generating conditions that can destabilise high-mountain rock and ice." The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development noted that hydrological observations indicated "the exceptional speed and magnitude of the flood wave." Similar glacial instability has raised alarms in other mountain regions, Breitbart reported that the glacier collapse likely dammed a river temporarily before the water surged downstream in a single devastating pulse.
Chinese government officials maintained tight controls on information. Details about major disasters on the Chinese side are typically released with delay and without personal stories of victims. Satellite images showed the border checkpoint area at Gyirong Port had been flattened to a muddy plain. CCTV broadcast footage of villages being evacuated, but the human toll on China's side remained far less documented than Nepal's.
Nepal's government, for its part, shared a public list of people rescued, a step toward transparency, though the conflicting death tolls from its own disaster-management authority and police underscored the fog that still hung over the full scope of the catastrophe.
The open questions were substantial. How many of the 3,700-plus people rescued in Nepal were foreign nationals? What was the condition of those still trapped in the hydropower tunnel? And would the unstable lake above Gyirong release another flood?
When a disaster of this magnitude strikes, the measure of a government is not just how fast it responds, it is whether it lets others help. Nepal's initial refusal of foreign rescue teams, while its own citizens and hundreds of foreigners remained buried in mud, was a failure of priorities that cost time no one could afford to lose.
