At least 1,500 missing after deadly Nepal-Tibet floods

Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player Open Navigation Menu --> Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Close Navigation Menu Home News Expand/collapse submenu for News National World Politics Business Health Science Climate Race Culture Expand/collapse submenu for Culture Books Movies Television Pop Culture Food Art & Design Performing Arts Life Kit Gaming Music Expand/collapse submenu for Music Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions Podcasts & Shows Expand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows Daily Morning Edition Weekend Edition Saturday Weekend Edition Sunday All Things Considered Up First Here & Now NPR Politics Podcast Featured Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! The U.S. Geological Survey says a glacial collapse triggered the floods, after initially reporting the event as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake. Chinese surveillance footage from the Tibetan side of the border shows a huge wall of mud and debris crashing over buildings and engulfing roads as people desperately try to flee the torrent. Residents have described their terror as great waves of water barreled down valleys, burying people and homes under the mud. Santa Tamang, a 25-year-old university student who lives in one river valley, spoke to NPR by phone. Tamang said her family was able to rush to higher ground, carrying her elderly grandmother with them, but their home was washed away. "Everything is gone. My childhood, my family, my community," Tamang said. Many of the missing are Hindu pilgrims, who were journeying to Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists. Rescue efforts, still in their first stages, have been hampered by the fact that the floodwaters have washed away entire roads. Riaz Lodhi, country director for the World Food Programme in Nepal, said rescue workers are trying to dig people out of the mud and that the Nepalese government is deploying helicopters to help. "It's all happening in the mountainous region where road access is always challenging, but under these circumstances, as far as we know at the moment, it is impossible," Lodhi told NPR. Dhruba Gurmachhan from the aid group World Vision says they expect more than 30,000 households to be impacted by the disaster. Aid workers say Nepalese authorities are well-practiced in disaster response, having learned from Nepal's devastating 2015 earthquake, which killed more than 1,000 people. But Gurmachhan says these floods are unlike anything anyone has seen before. "We are very much worried about children, women and people with a disability. They are in the open sky. They don't have anything to eat, they don't have sanitation," Gurmachhan told NPR. The U.S. State Department said it would be providing $500,000 in aid and that it was deploying a disaster response adviser to the region to support response efforts. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said U.N. teams and partners were mobilizing supplies and personnel in Nepal to support communities affected by the disaster. U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said he had spoken to Nepal's foreign minister and "expressed Britain's solidarity and deepest condolences for the disaster that has occurred." He said Britain had offered "financial, search and rescue and other help to aid the disaster response." Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government was "closely following the situation" and "stands ready" to provide support. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote on X, "We are aware of a number of Australians in the area and officials are urgently working to confirm their welfare. We are liaising with local authorities as well as tour operators." The region saw similar flash floods in July 2025, when a glacial lake in Tibet saw significant quantities of ice melt and then overflow because of high temperatures. Climate change experts say the increasingly unstable ice system in the Himalayan mountain range threatens communities, infrastructure and water supplies across one of the world's most densely populated regions. Mohammad Farooq Azam from the environmental advocacy group International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which monitors Asia's high mountains, told NPR the Himalaya region is warming faster than the global average. The warmer temperatures are melting and thus destabilizing many of the 60,000 glaciers there, triggering these kinds of avalanches. This is becoming more urgent, Azam says, as these disasters become more frequent, but experts lack data to better identify the areas that are most at risk of future disasters like this. Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a hydrologist who focuses on the science of glaciers in the Himalayas, told NPR that across the region, the frequency of these deadly events has been increasing. This, though, was the worst such disaster he could ever recall. Anyone who makes such an offer or request is not an NPR employee and does not represent NPR. Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor