Rizky Amelia
A devastating surge of floodwater tore through high-altitude communities in Nepal on Wednesday after an avalanche of ice and rock crashed into a Himalayan river system, killing at least eight people and leaving hundreds more feared swept away.
The torrents raced along the Bhotekoshi river beginning at roughly 9am local time (03:15 GMT), demolishing settlements, ripping up roads and destroying hydropower installations in their path, according to officials. Villages and critical infrastructure along the waterway were washed away as the flood front pushed downstream.
Fears mounted for 384 tourists who remain unaccounted for, authorities said, among them 291 foreign nationals from India, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
With local resources stretched thin by the scale of the emergency, Kathmandu has turned to its neighbours for assistance. "We have asked both India and China to help us with the rescue efforts," government spokesperson Sasmit Pokharel said.
Disaster alerts were broadcast across a string of districts, instructing residents to stay well clear of the Bhotekoshi, Trishuli and Narayani rivers while conditions remained dangerous.
Rasuwa district, which sits on Nepal's northern border, endured the worst of the flooding. The same area was battered almost exactly a year earlier, when an overflowing glacial lake on the Tibetan side of the frontier sent water pouring across the boundary, claiming nine lives and wrecking a crucial bridge linking the two countries.
Specialists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development reconstructed the mechanics of Wednesday's disaster: an avalanche made up of ice and rock slid down on the Nepal side of the mountains and dammed the Lhende Khola, a tributary that feeds the Bhotekoshi. That blockage then failed abruptly, releasing a sudden and destructive pulse of water into the valley below. Researchers said the episode laid bare the mounting dangers confronting the Himalayas, a range where temperatures are climbing quickly and where rising heat is destabilising ice, rock and glacial lakes.
The Nepal army joined the emergency operation, saying helicopters and trained disaster-response personnel had been dispatched to the devastated zone as authorities scrambled to judge the full extent of the destruction.
The country's power sector took a heavy blow. The Nepal Electricity Authority estimated that roughly 430 megawatts of generating capacity — a combination of hydropower plants and solar facilities — had been damaged or knocked offline, a serious setback in a nation that depends heavily on its rivers for electricity.
At the political level, Prime Minister Balendra Shah convened an urgent session of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority to coordinate relief efforts and take stock of the situation.
Images from the disaster zone conveyed the enormity of the loss. In Nuwakot district, shattered houses stood on the brink of the swollen, silt-caked banks of the Trishuli river, while crowds gathered along the shore to film the churning, debris-laden current. One photograph showed a man confined to his balcony, hemmed in by muddy water and wreckage after the river burst its bounds. At Galchhi in neighbouring Dhading district, a dense torrent of mud thundered through a riverbed.
Each year, the monsoon season stretching from June through September brings deadly floods and landslides to South Asia. Scientists caution that climate change is amplifying these threats, driving up both the frequency and the intensity of extreme weather across the rapidly warming Himalayan region.
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