KATHMANDU: The death toll from the catastrophic glacier collapse on the Nepal–China border climbed to 547 in Nepal on Friday, Nepal Police said, as rescuers pressed deeper into shattered valleys where entire villages have simply disappeared — and then pulled back again as a newly formed lake on the border began to overflow.
Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) put the figure slightly lower, at 538, with 977 people still unaccounted for. Officials say discrepancies of this kind are normal at this stage of a disaster, with communications down, roads gone and half a dozen agencies counting separately across eight districts. Nepal Police also reported 1,473 injured. On the Chinese side, authorities in Tibet’s Gyirong county said five people had died and 558 remained missing.
The disaster struck without warning in the early hours of Wednesday. There was no rain. According to Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Centre and international monitoring agencies, part of a glacier high in the Himalayas — near the Langtang Lirung peak — broke away and sent a surge of ice, water, rock and mud thundering down river valleys straddling the frontier. The US Geological Survey said the debris flow travelled nearly 100 kilometres along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers, obliterating settlements, dozens of bridges and roughly 40 kilometres of road, knocking out hydropower installations and severing the highway linking Nepal to China. Survivors downstream described waves close to 30 feet high.
The cause was initially misidentified. The USGS first logged a magnitude 4.4 earthquake roughly 41 miles north of Kathmandu. It later revised that analysis entirely, concluding — on the basis of nearby seismic stations, long-period seismic waves and satellite imagery — that the signal was in fact a magnitude 5.2 glacial collapse, and that no earthquake had occurred at all.
Satellite imagery reviewed by researchers showed a substantial section of the glacier’s lower end shearing off at about 5,200 metres and plunging some 1,200 metres. Geologists estimate the detached block of ice and rock was dozens of times the volume of the Empire State Building.
Climate scientists at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said an avalanche from the glacier was the likely trigger. Researchers are examining whether accelerated melting contributed to the glacier’s instability, though no direct link to climate change has been established for this particular collapse.
Kathmandu has deployed roughly 30,000 security personnel across the affected districts; the NDRRMA counted 13,295 personnel and 15 helicopters — six from the Nepali Army and nine chartered from private operators — directly assigned to search, relief and rehabilitation. More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal, the authority said. The Red Cross estimates more than 90,000 people have been affected in some way.
The largest number of bodies — 221 — has been recovered in Chitwan district, dozens of miles downstream from the worst-hit areas, a measure of how far the surge carried.
In one of the week’s few uplifting episodes, the Nepali Army rescued 350 workers and residents trapped inside a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project in Rasuwa, operating in poor weather and high river flows. More than 100 people are still believed to be trapped in the same tunnel, and a specialist team with technical equipment resumed the search at first light Friday. The army said it had pulled 883 people to safety across Rasuwa on Thursday alone.
Upper Trishuli-1, a 216-megawatt, $647 million project about 70 kilometres north of Kathmandu, was close to completion. Korean media reported that more than 90 per cent of its upper dam and roughly 90 per cent of the workers’ base camp were destroyed.
Helicopters have been ferrying tents, food and emergency supplies to communities cut off entirely by the floods. One rescue pilot said he had flown some 20 sorties and lifted out more than 120 people.
Attention has now shifted to a hazard created by the disaster itself. A barrier lake — formed when debris dammed a river — has appeared straddling the Nepal–China border at an elevation of about 2,950 metres, and both governments have warned it is unstable. Chinese authorities said the lake held around two million cubic metres of water and was expected to take on a further three million within three days.
Rescue work was suspended on both sides early Friday after the lake began to overflow, with Chinese teams and vehicles ordered back to high ground. Nepal Police issued a fresh alert and evacuated people from stretches of the Trishuli after receiving information that a dam on the Tibetan side had burst. “The water level is about to rise, so everyone is being stopped,” police officer P. Chaudhary said, describing vehicles turning back and crews withdrawing.
Operations later resumed. Nepal Police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle said the search had continued throughout, though on high alert. State broadcaster CCTV reported that water levels had dropped by about 32 feet and that the risk from the dammed lake was easing, with rescue work proceeding in an orderly manner. Nepali crews have been relying on satellite imagery to track conditions and plan to install cameras and sensors downstream.
The Red Cross said the overflow had blocked delivery of relief supplies. “We’re of course very concerned about the secondary flood,” said David Fisher, who heads the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies delegation in Nepal.
At Gyirong Port, the land crossing on the border, buildings lie buried under a metre and a half of mud, and roads and telecommunications links remain severed. China has deployed about 500 military and paramilitary personnel. Some 680 rescuers finally reached the worst-hit area on Friday on foot and by raft, with some lowered in by drone; the first professional rescue team — 16 firefighters and a search dog — arrived at the port in the afternoon.
Premier Li Qiang visited the disaster area in Tibet on Thursday to oversee relief operations. State media named Huang Peng, 35, a police officer who had worked at the Gyirong checkpoint for 13 years, as the first person on the Chinese side confirmed missing; security camera footage appeared to show him waving people away from the oncoming water.
Nepali authorities said 644 of those unaccounted for in Nepal are foreign nationals — workers, trekkers and pilgrims, many of them travelling the route toward Mount Kailash. Also missing are Nepali security personnel who had been stationed at the border with Tibet and engineers working on hydropower projects in the same area. On the Chinese side, 260 of the 558 missing are foreigners.
The US State Department said about 90 Americans were unaccounted for and that five US citizens had been safely evacuated, adding it was not aware of any confirmed American deaths. Washington has pledged $500,000 and is sending a disaster response advisor. President Donald Trump said the United States was willing to send “any help.”
Nepal has, for now, declined foreign search-and-rescue teams. “The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don’t require such help,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lok Bahadur Chhetri said Friday, indicating that cash contributions would be more useful than physical deployments.
Messages of sympathy have arrived from across the region. In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif both conveyed condolences to Nepal, with Islamabad saying it stood in solidarity with the government and people of Nepal and was ready to extend all possible assistance. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said he was “deeply distressed” by the toll and paid tribute to rescue teams working in punishing conditions.
Punjab has now added its own offer. In a statement issued in Lahore on Friday, Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives and damage to property in Nepal, and said the province was prepared to help.
Expressing solidarity with the people of Nepal, the chief minister said the people of Punjab stood with their Nepali brothers and sisters in the difficult hour. She said the loss of precious lives and widespread destruction in Nepal was deeply distressing.
The chief minister prayed for the speedy recovery of the injured and the early rehabilitation of families affected by the disaster, adding that the Punjab government was ready to extend all possible assistance to the government of Nepal on humanitarian grounds.
The offer carries a particular resonance in Punjab, where flood response has dominated the provincial government’s agenda this monsoon season.
The Dalai Lama also issued a statement offering condolences to the bereaved.
Communities along the Trishuli and Gandak river systems — including areas across the border in India — remain on alert. Officials have warned the toll is likely to rise further as rescuers reach areas still inaccessible.
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