More than 3,000 missing after glacier-collapse flash flood on Nepal-Tibet border, 682 bodies recovered
More than 3,000 people remain missing after a flash flood hit the Nepal-Tibet border Wednesday, per ABC News. A landslide dislodged a Himalayan glacier, sending over 100 million cubic meters of ice and debris downhill, per USGS. At least 682 bodies recovered.
More than 3,000 people remain missing after a flash flood tore through the Nepal-Tibet border region on Wednesday, authorities said Saturday, as search and rescue operations were suspended because of poor weather. At least 682 bodies have been recovered across the region: 675 in Nepal and 7 in Tibet, according to Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority and China's Xinhua News Agency. Nepal's disaster authority said at least 7,514 people, including 227 foreign nationals, had been rescued. As of Friday, 90 Americans were among the missing, with five Americans evacuated so far, according to a U.S. State Department spokesperson. The flood struck the northern Rasuwa district around 8:40 a.m. local time Wednesday, inundating areas along the Trishuli River and causing destruction at least 62 miles downriver, according to an ABC News analysis of satellite images. It was triggered by a landslide roughly 12 miles from the Rasuwagadhi border post that dislodged a Himalayan glacier from a cliff about 16,000 feet high, sending the debris avalanche some 6,000 feet down the slope. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated more than 100 million cubic meters of ice, rock and debris were displaced in the event. The scale of material dislodged in a single glacier collapse, enough to bury infrastructure dozens of miles downstream, illustrates the growing risk that Himalayan communities face from rapid, hard-to-predict glacial hazards.