Nepal flood toll climbs past 500 as a barrier lake forces rescuers off the river

By Friday evening the confirmed death count from the 26 August glacial collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border had moved past 500. Nepali police put the national figure at least at 547. China's state broadcaster CCTV reported five deaths in Tibet and 558 people still missing on that side of the frontier. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said early estimates put about 93,000 people in the path of the flood.

Those numbers kept changing through the day because search teams reached ground they could not reach on Thursday. The Nepal Army said it had pulled about 350 workers and residents out of the area around the Trishuli 3A hydropower project. About 100 people remained trapped in or near a tunnel at the site. Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said the weather and the river were still moving against the crews.

The flood started on Wednesday morning when ice and rock dropped off Langtang Lirung. The U.S. Geological Survey registered the collapse as a magnitude 5.2 event at 08:37 local time. Debris fell about 1,200 metres, blocked the Lende Khola, then failed. Water rose seven to nine metres in half an hour on the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli corridor. Settlements from Timure and Rasuwagadhi through Syabrubesi, Betrawati and Trishuli Bazaar took the first hit. The surge reached as far as Mugling before it began to recede.

A second pulse from a new lake

Rescue work stopped for part of Friday after a barrier lake on the border overflowed. Debris from the first flood had dammed the river and stored water behind a wall of mud and rock. Chinese authorities said the lake held about two million cubic metres and was expected to take another three million cubic metres over the next three days. CCTV later said the water level had fallen more than 30 feet from the previous day and that the risk of a full breach had "gradually decreased."

Residents in Rasuwa were seen climbing hillsides when the Trishuli rose again. In Bidur, the headquarters of Nuwakot district, work paused while the river climbed. Qianggong Zhang, who leads climate and environmental risk work at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, said a blockage still sat upstream and that a second flood remained possible.

China sent teams from Tibet and Sichuan to the core rescue site at Gyirong Port on Friday afternoon, Xinhua reported. Nepal deployed about 30,000 security personnel across the valleys. Helicopters did most of the first lifts because roads and bridges were gone. Officials said nearly 25 miles of road had been cut. Keshav Sharma, a former infrastructure minister, said crews would have to cut new tracks through the mud before trucks could move at volume.

Who is still missing

Missing-person lists are larger than the death lists and less stable. One Nepal police count put 910 people out of contact inside the country, including 517 foreign tourists. Beijing said 100 Chinese citizens were missing in Nepal, a figure that is not always folded into the Nepali total. The Department of Tourism earlier said 668 tourists from 34 countries had been out of contact since Wednesday morning, most of them on treks.

Indians form the largest foreign group. The Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said on Friday that about 320 Indian nationals remained uncontactable and that 100 Persons of Indian Origin were in the same category. Twenty-one pilgrims from Tamil Nadu reached Delhi after an earlier lift to Kathmandu. Ninety-six Indians stranded on the Chinese side had crossed into Nepal. The United States said about 90 of its citizens were unaccounted for. Australia, Britain, Canada, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and South Korea also appear on the tourism board list.

India sent a third relief flight with ten tonnes of supplies, an 11-member medical team and tunnel rescue specialists after reports that about 100 people were still inside the hydropower works. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar confirmed the Tamil Nadu group had been brought out. Nearly 300 Maharashtra residents were reported safe but stranded.

What the flood destroyed

The Pacific Disaster Center's Friday snapshot listed damage to communications and hydropower along with the roads. IFRC's first bulletin on 26 August already named police posts, markets and the Rasuwagadhi crossing. Bidur, once a river town, lost most of its houses. Omkar Joshi, a 35-year-old customs agent lifted off a hilltop in Timure, told AFP the place looked like a graveyard of sand and pebbles.

Rasuwa was still rebuilding from the 2015 earthquake. Hundreds of families displaced that year had moved onto the lower banks of the Trishuli. Those plots sat in the path of Wednesday's surge. CARE said more than 10,000 households along the corridor need shelter. Nepal's disaster authority declared the affected areas crisis zones for three months.

Dev Shrestha, a worker airlifted from the hydropower site, told AFP there had been at least 400 people on the job. "More people died than were rescued," he said. Buddha Tamang said he lived because he was inside a tunnel when the water arrived.

What the numbers still hide

Counts from Kathmandu, Beijing and the Red Cross do not yet match. Some missing-person files will close when phone networks return. Others will become confirmed deaths as bodies come out of the mud. The IFRC warning that the toll will rise is the only part of the picture that every agency repeats.

The open operational question is the barrier lake. If the debris dam holds and the level keeps falling, Friday's pause will look like a precaution. If it fails, the same corridor that lost its bridges this week will take a second pulse before the first search is finished.