A 14-year-old girl and her mother are among at least 87 Americans unaccounted for after a catastrophic glacier collapse sent floodwaters tearing through the Nepal-China border region, and their family has heard nothing since Wednesday morning.
Rashi Shashidharan, an eighth grader, and her 54-year-old mother Rekha were on a Hindu pilgrimage toward Mount Kailash in Tibet when a massive section of glacier broke loose from a mountainside. The resulting torrent of ice, rock, and water ripped through mountain communities along the river, killing at least 939 people and leaving nearly 4,000 unaccounted for. The last anyone heard from Rekha was a Wednesday morning message to her father: they were planning breakfast and had a noon embassy appointment. Then silence.
Nepal's disaster authority has confirmed the death toll, and Nepali government officials say 3,925 people remain unaccounted for, including 592 foreign nationals from 31 countries. Temporary morgues have been set up in nearby woodlands. Power and communications are down. Roads are destroyed. And families across the United States are waiting by their phones.
Rekha and Rashi Shashidharan had spent several days in Kathmandu adjusting to the altitude before heading north toward the Chinese border. The trip to Mount Kailash was a dream for the teenager, her uncle told The U.S. Sun. Rashi had wanted to make the journey alone, but her mother came along.
Shekhar Agrawal, Rekha's brother, spoke from Mumbai about the family's agonizing wait. He said his sister and niece had not yet crossed into China, they were still on the Nepal side when the floods hit.
"She messaged her father, and my sister also spoke to him on Wednesday morning. They were planning to have breakfast and then they had an appointment at the embassy at 12pm. That was the last time we heard from them."
Agrawal said the timeline suggests they were still in their hotel when the floodwaters arrived. He described footage of the disaster in stark terms: waves moving at what he estimated were speeds over 100 miles per hour and rising 150 feet high. No independent expert has verified those figures, but the scale of destruction across the region leaves little doubt about the force involved.
The Isha Foundation, a nonprofit spiritual organization headquartered in McMinnville, Tennessee, had a group of 77 followers and three volunteers traveling in Nepal. They arrived at an immigration center near the Nepal-China border at 9:05 a.m. Wednesday after completing a two-week trek. Less than ten minutes later, floodwaters rushed in. Twenty-two of the missing Americans were part of that group, and at least one Tennessean remains unaccounted for. The foundation declined to identify the individual.
Leslie Crespi, a community liaison for the Isha Foundation, described the scene:
"The area they were in was really hit by great force. The valley at the location they were in is buried under tons of debris right now."
Crespi said Chinese authorities have begun excavating the site. The foundation has notified affected families and dispatched a team to the region. As the number of missing Americans has shifted with each passing day, the families' uncertainty has only deepened.
Jitendra Patel, 63, has vanished without a trace. His son Sunny told The U.S. Sun he is clinging to the possibility that his father was rescued and transported to the Chinese side of the border. Reports have suggested China was moving survivors to a town called Gyirong, roughly 18 miles from the flood zone, but Sunny said the family has no confirmation.
"Just keeping hope alive no matter how slim the chances."
Sunny described difficulty getting answers from the Chinese government. That frustration is shared by families across the globe. The Washington Examiner reported that 558 people were missing in Gyirong County alone, including 260 foreigners, and that nationals from more than 20 countries, India, Malaysia, Ukraine, Australia, and the United Kingdom among them, are unaccounted for.
Ramesh Sharma, 65, and Neelam Sharma, 64, both of New York, were also on a religious pilgrimage. They remain among the missing. The death toll has continued to climb as rescue teams push deeper into devastated areas.
Not every story from the disaster ends in silence. At Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Bidur, Nepal, an unnamed accountant burst into headmaster Rajendra Dawadi's office with an urgent warning. The accountant's relative in the hard-hit Rasuwa district had called with news that floodwaters were coming fast.
Dawadi, quoted by Reuters, acted immediately:
"We immediately said: Stop the class, ring the bell."
More than 900 students and 16 faculty members evacuated to higher ground. The entire operation took roughly 14 minutes. Dawadi described loading students onto buses and racing across a bridge just before it collapsed.
"As our bus crossed the new bridge, the old bridge collapsed."
The school itself was destroyed by floodwaters. But the accountant who sounded the alarm paid a personal price: after warning Dawadi, he rushed home, got his father to safety, and returned for his mother. Their home had been swept away. His mother remains missing. At least one school employee is also still unaccounted for.
Climate experts identified the trigger as the lower portion of a glacier breaking off from roughly 17,000 feet, according to the New York Post. The resulting ice avalanche blocked a river and sent a sudden surge downstream. Water levels on the Trishuli River rose 27 feet in just 30 minutes, Newsmax reported, citing disaster risk reduction specialist Saswata Sanyal.
Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah called the flooding a "major disaster for the region, triggered by an avalanche of ice and rock in the Himalayas." He used the catastrophe to press an international climate argument:
"This event signals the escalating risks we face in the Himalayan region due to climate change. The time has come for Nepal to forcefully raise the issue of climate-induced disasters with the international community."
Nepal's army rescued 109 people on Monday. Fox News reported that 13 Americans had confirmed their safety, bringing the estimated number of missing U.S. citizens down from 90 to roughly 80. A State Department spokesperson confirmed the 13 had "made their way to safety in Nepal." Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said over 10,000 people had been rescued overall, including more than 323 foreign nationals.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged that India was "prepared to provide Nepal with all possible types of humanitarian assistance," with teams closely coordinating on rescue and relief. The United Nations Development Programme in Nepal described the floods as bringing "immense sorrow." International aid has been mobilized, but the sheer scale of the destruction, roads gone, bridges collapsed, power and communications severed, has made reaching remote areas painfully slow.
As the death toll has climbed past 1,100, hundreds of families in the United States and dozens of other countries face the same torment Shekhar Agrawal described from Mumbai.
"We are hoping for a favorable outcome but at the moment we have nothing. It is upsetting because they are still missing. My phone is constantly ringing but no updates."
He added one more thought: "If I get good news, I will be the first person shouting it out."
Meanwhile, rescue teams continue battling devastation across the region, and the window for finding survivors narrows with every passing hour.
Eighty-seven American families are waiting for a phone call. The least their government owes them is a clear answer about what it is doing to bring their loved ones home.
