Nepal flood toll reaches 1,355 as 4,996 people remain missing

Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority put the death toll from the 26 August flash floods at 1,355 on 7 September. Rescue teams are still looking for 4,996 people, among them at least 589 foreign nationals. The same bulletin said 13,396 people have been rescued. A later local count on Monday evening put the dead at 1,356.

The water started as an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border. It entered the Bhotekoshi and ran south, taking houses, vehicles, roads, bridges and hydropower works with it. Chinese reports put at least 43 dead on the Tibetan side, with more than 500 missing there.

Bodies recovered inside Nepal are concentrated in eight districts: 363 in Chitwan, 222 or 223 in Nawalparasi East, 221 in Nawalparasi West, 197 in Nuwakot, 169 in Rasuwa, 75 in Gorkha, 70 in Dhading and 38 in Tanahu. Identification has almost stalled. By Monday only 98 bodies had been named and given to families. Most of the rest came out of water and mud far from where people last lived, damaged, decomposed or in parts.

Officials said more than 1,000 unidentified bodies have already been buried after DNA samples were taken. Hospitals put photographs of the dead on walls. Relatives arrive with pictures of the missing and walk those corridors. Police say distance, water and time have made visual recognition unreliable.

A joint command of the security forces is still at work. Major effort is directed at hydropower tunnels where hundreds of men were thought to be trapped when the flood hit. Indian and Chinese specialist teams are working with Nepali crews. More than 21,000 security personnel remain deployed across the eight worst-hit districts. Monday was a national day of mourning, the thirteenth day after the avalanche.

Pakistan sent 100 tonnes of relief goods. The United Nations has asked for faster access to settlements that are still cut off. Reconstruction of the Bhotekoshi corridor alone could cost up to 5 billion dollars, according to early Nepali assessments now in draft.

The missing list is larger than the confirmed dead by a factor of almost four. Foreign names on that list include trekkers, project staff and people who were on the roads that no longer exist. Until DNA matching catches up, the official death figure will keep moving as bodies are found and as samples from graves are linked to families. The 98 identifications so far show how slow that work is.

Kathmandu has to hold two lines at once. Tourism calendars for autumn are still on the books. The river valleys that feed those routes are the same valleys that buried the dead. The authority's daily numbers, district by district, are the only public measure of which task is winning.