RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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U.S. & World Death toll rises in Nepal-China border disaster as lake poses new flood threat The rescue operation is continuing but with high alert, officials say
Nepal police issued a fresh alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibet side has burst. WPVI Rescuers pulled out survivors caked in dark brown mud and helicopters lifted stranded people to safety Friday as Nepal and China raced to respond to catastrophic flash floods that killed more than 470 people and left more than 1,500 missing.
Nepal authorities said the death toll there rose to 469, injured people were taken to hospitals and helicopters carried more than 3,000 people to safety. In contrast on the Chinese side, there was little information on survivors, although the death toll rose to five Friday, as state media showed evacuations of villages and leaders' efforts to direct relief efforts.
China's state media previously said 558 people were missing and Nepal’s disaster management authority said Friday that 977 people were missing. Hundreds of them were foreigners in the area to work, trek or make a pilgrimage to a sacred peak.
Nepal police issued a fresh alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibet side has burst. Security personnel and rescue and relief workers were told to stay on high alert and immediately move to a safe location if necessary. It is unclear if the dam is related to the flooding concern from a barrier lake that formed after the initial flash floods, high up in the Chinese side of the Himalayan mountains.
Nepal police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told The Associated Press that the rescue operation was continuing but with high alert. “It hasn’t stopped.”
Nepali and Chinese authorities earlier warned of further flooding from the barrier lake that formed after Wednesday’s disaster and was already overflowing. They urged people in potentially affected areas to move to safer ground.
Although Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Friday morning that the lake’s barrier was more than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Gyirong Port, the hard-hit border crossing with Nepal, it said that the risk of flooding was high.
CCTV said the lake was at an elevation of 2,950 meters (9,680 feet), about 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) above Gyirong Port.
Nepali Army rescuers were working to help people trapped in a hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa, part of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project.
In video from the scene, rescuers half-pulled, half-pushed the man covered in dark brown mud out of the tunnel. He was one of likely dozens trapped in the tunnel.
Army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet told The Associated Press the focus was on survivors.
“It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud,” Basnet said. “Our first priority is rescuing the stranded people.”
Nepal’s disaster management authority said 3,253 people had been airlifted by helicopter from the disaster area. Survivors, including injured people, were taken to Kathmandu and other locations.
Scientists who’ve studied satellite images said bedrock underneath a glacier high in the Himalayan region had collapsed, taking part of the glacier with it. The rockfall was so extreme, it reached a magnitude 5.2 seismic measurement. The rocks and melted water then swelled the rivers in the valleys below, causing a torrent of water that swept buildings, bridges and earth downstream in Tibet and Nepal.
Customs officer Karbir Gaire was among some of the survivors in Timure, the closest Nepalese village to the border with China.
Gaire reached his office around 8 a.m. Wednesday and was busy working on his computer when he first felt the ground shake.
“Right after the shake, I noticed a black storm coming towards us," he recalled from Kathmandu, where he is back with family. "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.”
Gaire doesn’t remember exactly how many people were in the office when the disaster struck, but 15 colleagues have gone missing. “It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don’t call it a flood, it was a tsunami.”
He described Timure as a vibrant place filled with government offices, hotels, cafes, banks, primary schools, tea shops and residential buildings, where more than 1,500 people were living.
Rajan Tamang, a restaurant owner in New York City, said he learned from family in Kathmandu that his mother and sister were among those who died, while many other relatives and friends remained missing.
“My family was just waking up, and they didn’t even get any information, and suddenly this flood came. Some of them are missing, some of them lost their life and only a few is alive,” he told The Associated Press after a vigil in New York.
Some of the missing may have been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others.
Vishnuram Ramaswamy, who works at a private company in the southern Indian city of Puducherry, said that he last spoke to his mother and two sisters who were on pilgrimage to Mount Kailash on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m.
“My mother said they were on their way towards the border area and said they’ll reach their hotel and call us,” he said. “This was the last we spoke to them. They have been unreachable since.”
Ramaswamy said he’s in constant contact with Nepal and Indian government officials as well as the travel agencies who arranged his family’s trip but has not received any updates about their whereabouts so far.
“This was the first time they had gone on this pilgrimage and it was something my mother always wanted to do,” he said.
Nepal's tourism board has said that among the missing are more than 500 foreigners.
About 90 Americans were unaccounted for. U.S. President Donald Trump said the flooding was terrible to see, and he told reporters in the Oval Offi...
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