Delayed Cross-Border Alert Hindered Response to Deadly Nepal Flood

Nepal received information about the devastating flood around 16 minutes after the surge crossed the border from Tibet, according to Nepal News, which cited officials from the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. By then, the flood had already reached Syabrubesi and begun destroying settlements in upper Rasuwa.

The flood crossed into Nepal at around 8:40 am on Wednesday and reached Syabrubesi within 10 minutes, hydrologist Sauharda Joshi told Nepal News. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology received information about the event at around 8:56 am through the Rasuwa District Administration Office and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.

The department sent SMS alerts to communities along the river shortly before 9 am, Nepal News reported. However, the warning came after the flood had already started its destructive path through the upper part of Rasuwa district.

“If we had been informed while the flood was building up in Tibet, human casualties could have been significantly minimized,” Joshi told Nepal News.

The warning helped some communities downstream. Nepal News reported that Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary School in Nuwakot evacuated students to higher ground after receiving the warning during morning assembly.

The school has 1,650 students. According to its principal, Rajendra Dawadi, students who were inside the school premises remained safe even though the school was later reduced to a riverbed by the flood.

However, the school could not confirm the safety of students who were still travelling to the campus when the warning was issued, Nepal News reported.

This indicates that even a short warning can help when people are already gathered in a known location and have a clear route to higher ground. But it also shows the limits of a warning when people are travelling, communications are disrupted or evacuation plans are not in place.

The flood was linked to a suspected ice-rock avalanche and landslide in the Lhende Khola area near the Nepal-China border, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

ICIMOD said scientists were still investigating the exact cause, but preliminary assessments indicated that ice and rock debris may have entered the river and created a sudden surge carrying mud, water and boulders downstream. It said water levels in parts of the Trishuli River rose by several metres within about 30 minutes.

Chinese Academy of Sciences expert Kang Shichang told China’s The Paper that detecting an ice-rock avalanche upstream could theoretically provide about 20 minutes of warning to downstream communities. But he said monitoring equipment in the remote mountain region was limited and the source of the disaster was on the Nepalese side, close to the border.

That meant the flood could reach the border before authorities in Nepal received reliable information, The Paper reported.

ICIMOD’s Water and Disaster Risk Reduction Lead Neera Shrestha Pradhan said information alone was not enough. She said communities needed to understand the warning and know how to respond without panic.

Basanta Raj Adhikari, director of the Centre for Disaster Studies at Tribhuvan University, also said real-time risk information needed to reach local decision-makers and lead to “life-saving decisions,” according to ICIMOD.

The flood also damaged or swept away monitoring stations along the river system, Nepal News reported. This further complicated the authorities’ ability to track the flood and issue warnings as it moved downstream.

The evidence suggests that the 16-minute period was too late to protect many people in upper Rasuwa, where the flood had already arrived. But the evacuation at the Nuwakot school shows that a warning issued even minutes before the flood reaches a downstream location can help save lives.

The larger failure, according to the officials and experts cited by Nepal News and ICIMOD, was not simply the length of the warning. It was the absence of timely cross-border information before the flood entered Nepal.