Floods in Nepal-Tibet border region kill 547, leave over 1,500 missing

NUWAKOT, Nepal — Two days after waves nearly 30-feet high gushed down a river between Tibet and Nepal, wiping away communities for miles downstream, the death toll Friday had risen to 547 people in Nepal, according to police. Authorities in China, which rules Tibet, said their death toll was five.

Even as authorities raced along with efforts to provide aid and find survivors in Nepal, efforts were halted in border areas after Chinese authorities said a massive lake that had formed from debris had started to overflow.

The lake was formed from the same event on Wednesday when a glacier appeared to have collapsed and blocked a river valley, causing the rapid build up of water, mud, ice and debris that burst through and barreled down the Himalayas. Aid workers said rescue efforts were also paused in Nepali border areas but continued downstream. Nepali police urged residents to remain alert, and to stay away from riverbanks.

"We're worried, of course, for the population and for the safety of our own colleagues," says David Fisher, head of Delegation for Nepal at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "We don't have a full view about what kind of intensity would come in a second flood." Referring to Wednesday's events, he said, "there was no escape in some areas."

Both countries say more than 1,500 people remain missing, with more than half of them foreign nationals. The State Department said five Americans were rescued after the disaster but 90 remain missing.

Many appeared to be Hindu pilgrims, including the in-laws of 28-year-old Ariadna Riley. Her husband's parents are 64-year-old Neelum Kumari Sharma, a retired postal worker from Queens, and her husband, Ramesh Sharma, a 65-year-old retired engineer.

Riley told NPR that her in-laws had retired and saved up to make the arduous pilgrimage to circle Mt. Kailash in Tibet, a mountain revered by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and the Tibetan Bon tradition. "They were really excited," she said. "They were eager to be able to participate in — for them — an incredible event."

But she says her in-laws were at the border crossing area when the floods washed past.

Riley said her family lost contact with her in-laws that day and since then, "we have been tirelessly looking for them," she says.

"That's just been the most torturous part that anyone can imagine, is not knowing where your family is," she says, "and having to wait to hear if they're dead or not. It's one of the devastating things that this family is going through right now."

The State Department pledged to provide $500,000 to rescue efforts.

While many of the missing were pilgrims, also unaccounted for were Nepali security forces who were at the border with Tibet, alongside engineers who were working on hydropower projects in the same area.

That area in Nepal, known as Rasuwa, also remained the most difficult to reach, with bridges and roads washed away.

On the Tibetan side, the first rescue teams reached the worst hit area of the Gyirong border checkpoint with Rasuwa on foot only by Friday afternoon.

Aid workers from Oxfam and Red Cross said Nepali authorities were conducting search-and-rescue efforts by helicopter until they suspended rescue efforts.

One rescue pilot, Andy Thapa, told NPR that he had conducted some 20 flights and collected more than 120 people. Thapa said one man told him he'd lost his entire family of 9 people in the floods.

In a video he shared with NPR, a person sat covered in mud on the side of a hill alone. In another, rescue workers pulled a man with a wound on his leg out of the helicopter and onto a stretcher.

"We saw many people stuck in the middle of the mud," Thapa told NPR. "Half of their body were just inside the mud, and they were seeking for help. But there was no place to land, even no place to drop for the rescue."

Nepali authorities were also taking aid and dropping it in the area, said Santosh Pandey from the aid group Oxfam. "We are coordinating with the government providing support basically on non-food items and hygiene kits," he said. Pandey said because that area is largely inaccessible it also means the death count is likely to rise further. Already, some morgues had run out of space.

Fisher, the top Red Cross official in Nepal, said a key concern remained access to clean water in devastated areas.

He called for solidarity with Nepali victims, "not just for the first ration for the first day," he said, "but to really put them back on their feet."