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At least 1,500 missing after deadly Nepal-Tibet floods
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− Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Embedded Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics More than 500 killed, 90 Americans missing after Nepal-Tibet floods Many of the missing are foreign tourists after deadly floods hit the Nepal-Tibet border, sweeping away entire villages.
+ Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Embedded Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics More than 500 killed, 90 Americans missing after Nepal-Tibet floods Both countries say over 1,500 people remain missing, with more than half of them foreign nationals.
− World Floods kill more than 500 people in Nepal and Tibet, with 90 Americans among the missing Updated August 28, 202612:18 AM ET Originally published August 27, 20266:50 AM ET By
Fatima Al-Kassab
,
Diaa Hadid
Nepalese police officers watch as earthmovers clear the debris of flash flooding in Nepal's Nuwakot district on Thursday.
+ Asia Floods kill more than 500 people in Nepal and Tibet, with 90 Americans among the missing Updated August 28, 20269:23 AM ET Originally published August 27, 20266:50 AM ET By
Mamita Bhandari
,
Diaa Hadid
,
Jennifer Pak
An aerial view shows houses lying deluged in sludge after flash floods at Devighat, Bidur municipality in Nepal's Nuwakot district, on Thursday.
− Niranjan Shrestha/AP hide caption
The confirmed death toll has passed 500 people after devastating flash floods that hit the Nepal-Tibet border early Wednesday, sweeping away roads, bridges and entire villages, with more than 1,000 still missing.
The U.S.
+ Prabin Ranabhat/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
NUWAKOT, Nepal — Two days after waves nearly 30-feet high gushed down a river between Tibet and Nepal, wiping away communities for miles downstream, the death toll Friday had risen to 547 people in Nepal, according to police.
− State Department said about 90 Americans are among the people unaccounted for. The State Department said, as of Thursday morning, was not aware of any confirmed deaths of U.S. citizens.
+ Authorities in China, which rules Tibet, said their death toll was five.
− The U.S. Geological Survey says a glacial collapse triggered the floods, after initially reporting the event as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake.
+ Even as authorities raced along with efforts to provide aid and find survivors in Nepal, efforts were halted in border areas after Chinese authorities said a massive lake that had formed from debris had started to overflow.
− 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.
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− Residents have described their terror as great waves of water barreled down valleys, burying people and homes under the mud.
+ The lake was formed from the same event on Wednesday when a glacier appeared to have collapsed and blocked a river valley, causing the rapid build up of water, mud, ice and debris that burst through and barreled down the Himalayas.
− 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.
+ Aid workers said rescue efforts were also paused in Nepali border areas but continued downstream.
− "Everything is gone. My childhood, my family, my community," Tamang said.
+ Nepali police urged residents to remain alert, and to stay away from riverbanks.
− Nepal is a popular tourist destination, and many of those missing are foreign nationals — more than 600, according to the figures from the Nepal Tourism Board, although figures varied. In addition to the Americans, Nepal said people from India, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada were among the missing.
− India's Foreign Ministry counted 290 Indians who were "not contactable" as of 8 p.m.
+ "We're worried, of course, for the population and for the safety of our own colleagues," says David Fisher, head of Delegation for Nepal at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
− local time.
+ "We don't have a full view about what kind of intensity would come in a second flood." Referring to Wednesday's events, he said, "there was no escape in some areas."
Residents salvage belongings from their destroyed home following flash floods on Friday in Devighat, Nepal. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images hide caption
Both countries say more than 1,500 people remain missing, with more than half of them foreign nationals. The State Department said five Americans were rescued after the disaster but 90 remain missing.
− Chinese officials said 558 people were missing on the Tibet side of the border, including 260 foreign nationals.
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.
+ Many appeared to be Hindu pilgrims, including the in-laws of 28-year-old Ariadna Riley.
− 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.
+ Her husband's parents are 64-year-old Neelum Kumari Sharma, a retired postal worker from Queens, and her husband, Ramesh Sharma, a 65-year-old retired engineer.
− "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.
The United Nations' resident coordinator in Nepal, Lila Pieters Yahia, says the floods wiped out 35 bridges and destroyed about 25 miles of roads in Nepal.
+ Riley told NPR that her in-laws had retired and saved up to make the arduous pilgrimage to circle Mt.
− That's making humanitarian efforts all the more complicated.
+ Kailash in Tibet, a mountain revered by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and the Tibetan Bon tradition.
− She says the Nepalese government is deploying temporary bridges and the U.N.
+ "They were really excited," she said.
− is trying to help with that.
+ "They were eager to be able to participate in — for them — an incredible event."
But she says her in-laws were at the border crossing area when the floods washed past.
− 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.
+ Climate A melting glacier contributed to the deadly Nepal floods.
− But Gurmachhan says these floods are unlike anything anyone has seen before.
+ We can expect more like this Riley said her family lost contact with her in-laws that day and since then, "we have been tirelessly looking for them," she says.
− "We are very much worried about children, women and people with a disability.
+ "That's just been the most torturous part that anyone can imagine, is not knowing where your family is," she says, "and having to wait to hear if they're dead or not.
− They are in the open sky. They don't have anything to eat, they don't have sanitation," Gurmachhan told NPR.
+ It's one of the devastating things that this family is going through right now."
The State Department pledged to provide $500,000 to rescue efforts.
− A resident walks along a street covered in mud following flash floods and a landslide disaster in Devighat, in Nepal's Nuwakot district, on Wednesday. A massive flood and landslide disaster wiped out entire settlements. Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X, "We express our solidarity and are united in prayer for the Nepali people following the devastating floods."
The U.N. has offered an initial $2.5 million in humanitarian aid for Nepal and the Swiss government is pitching in $1 million more. 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.
+ While many of the missing were pilgrims, also unaccounted for were Nepali security forces who were at the border with Tibet, alongside engineers who were working on hydropower projects in the same area.
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+ That area in Nepal, known as Rasuwa, also remained the most difficult to reach, with bridges and roads washed away.
− India's Foreign Ministry said it had sent some of its helicopters to Nepal, dropping tents, food and other emergency supplies.
+ On the Tibetan side, the first rescue teams reached the worst hit area of the Gyirong border checkpoint with Rasuwa on foot only by Friday afternoon.
− U.K.
+ Aid workers from Oxfam and Red Cross said Nepali authorities were conducting search-and-rescue efforts by helicopter until they suspended rescue efforts.
One rescue pilot, Andy Thapa, told NPR that he had conducted some 20 flights and collected more than 120 people.
− 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.
+ Thapa said one man told him he'd lost his entire family of 9 people in the floods.
− 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.
+ In a video he shared with NPR, a person sat covered in mud on the side of a hill alone.
− 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.
+ In another, rescue workers pulled a man with a wound on his leg out of the helicopter and onto a stretcher.
− 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.
Rescue personnel carry a person affected by flash floods at Devghat in Nepal's Nuwakot district on Wednesday.
+ "We saw many people stuck in the middle of the mud," Thapa told NPR.
− Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
The warmer temperatures are melting and thus destabilizing many of the 60,000 glaciers there, triggering these kinds of avalanches.
+ "Half of their body were just inside the mud, and they were seeking for help.
− 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.
+ But there was no place to land, even no place to drop for the rescue."
Nepali authorities were also taking aid and dropping it in the area, said Santosh Pandey from the aid group Oxfam. "We are coordinating with the government providing support basically on non-food items and hygiene kits," he said. Pandey said because that area is largely inaccessible it also means the death count is likely to rise further. Already, some morgues had run out of space.
− 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.
+ Relatives check the lists of missing people following flash floods in Nepal, outside a hospital in Kathmandu on Friday.
− This, though, was the worst such disaster he could ever recall.
+ Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Fisher, the top Red Cross official in Nepal, said a key concern remained access to clean water in devastated areas.
− "Everything, probably directly or indirectly, is pointing the finger towards global warming."
Michele Kelemen contributed reporting from Washington.
NPR does not offer or accept money for coverage or interviews.
+ He called for solidarity with Nepali victims, "not just for the first ration for the first day," he said, "but to really put them back on their feet."
Ashish Pradhan of the International Crisis Group think tank said alongside aid, the flood — and future environmental crises — demanded a change in national priorities as human-induced planetary warming heated up the thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas.
+ "The industrialized states that have really contributed the most to global emissions, you know, have a really pointed responsibility to support vulnerable front-line states like Nepal."
NPR does not offer or accept money for coverage or interviews.