Nepal flood toll stands at 1,357 dead, 5,326 missing and 13,583 rescued

Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said on 8 September that 1,357 bodies have been recovered after the late-August flash floods on the Bhotekoshi and that 13,583 people have been rescued. About 5,326 people remain unaccounted for. Only 102 bodies have been identified and handed to families. Spokesperson Shanti Mahat said 6,827 injured people have received treatment: 327 in ten hospitals, 3,404 through the army and 3,096 through the Armed Police Force.

The flood began with an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on 26 August and tore through the central hill and inner Tarai districts. District tallies on the authority's sheet put 363 recovered dead in Chitwan, 223 in Nawalparasi East, 222 in Nawalparasi West, 197 in Nuwakot, 170 in Rasuwa, 75 in Gorkha, 70 in Dhading and 38 in Tanahun. The missing are concentrated higher up the valley: about 2,860 from Rasuwa and 1,981 from Nuwakot. Among the Rasuwa missing are 1,393 district residents and 1,286 people from elsewhere, plus 45 army personnel, 25 Nepal Police, 12 Armed Police, 73 government staff and 26 bank employees. About 587 foreign tourists are on the missing list.

Identification has failed at scale. Bodies came out of the river days later, broken, decomposed or in parts. More than 1,000 unidentified dead have already been buried after DNA samples were taken. Indian forensic teams are working through about 1,200 DNA samples in Kathmandu, the Ministry of External Affairs said. Hospitals put photographs of the unnamed dead on walls. Families arrived with pictures of their own.

The search still uses 21,402 security personnel: 9,287 soldiers, 7,912 police, 4,203 armed police. Helicopters have flown 1,157 army sorties, 203 armed-police sorties and 129 private flights from Kathmandu. Thirty-nine holding centres shelter 3,533 to 3,628 people depending on the day's count. Preliminary damage to houses, property and infrastructure is put at Rs 387.5 billion, about $2.56 billion. China has reported at least 43 dead and more than 500 missing on the Tibetan side of the same slope failure.

The second problem is the list of names that will not close. A tourist who was on a bus in Rasuwa and a farmer in Chitwan now sit in the same missing column. DNA will resolve some of those rows over months. It will not rebuild the roads, the hydropower intakes or the fields the water took. The authority's 8 September bulletin is a running count, not a conclusion. The recovered dead still outnumber the identified by more than ten to one.