Himalayan flash flood kills 162, leaves hundreds missing including 47 Americans

A glacier fractured high in the Himalayan peaks, and within hours, entire mountain towns were gone. The collapse sent a torrent of ice, rock, and mud racing down the valleys that straddle the border between Nepal and China's Tibet region, destroying everything in its path. By Wednesday evening, at least 162 people were confirmed dead. Hundreds more had vanished into the wreckage, and the death toll was still climbing as rescue teams worked through the night.

The scale of the missing was staggering. Across both sides of the border, more than 400 foreign nationals were unaccounted for—people who had come to trek the high passes and walk pilgrimage routes through some of the world's most remote terrain. Among them were 47 Americans, 34 Australians, 33 British citizens, and 24 Canadians. Nepal's tourism board confirmed the numbers, but the actual count remained uncertain; Chinese officials reported 558 people missing in Tibet's Gyirong county alone, including 260 foreigners, and it was unclear whether the two nations were counting overlapping groups or separate losses.

Surveillance footage from the Rasuwagadhi border crossing captured the moment the water arrived. A wall of mud and debris, churning with the force of a collapsing mountain, swept across the crossing in seconds. Buses and trucks parked nearby were lifted and tossed aside like toys. People fled on foot, screaming, with nowhere to go. Bridges cracked and vanished. Roads simply ceased to exist. In Nepal's Rasuwa region, which bore the brunt of the disaster, lush green valleys were transformed into channels of destruction. Videos verified by NBC News showed the same scene repeated across multiple locations: peaceful mountain towns obliterated, buildings swept away entirely, the landscape rewritten by water and stone.

On the Chinese side, the situation was dire and access was severely limited. Roads to the Gyirong Port crossing had been cut off. Communications and power supplies were down. As of Thursday morning, only two villagers from Resuo had been rescued, and three bodies had been recovered, according to Norbu Tsering, the acting mayor of Shigatse. The number of missing had more than doubled from earlier estimates—from 265 to 558—as the full scope of the disaster became clear. Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered an all-out search effort and called for strengthened early warning systems to prevent secondary disasters. The crossing itself had been hit by a mudslide just over a year prior, raising questions about whether the region's vulnerability had been adequately addressed.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged the scale of the loss at a news conference, noting that information about the 34 missing Australians remained severely limited given the magnitude of the disaster. Australia was deploying crisis response experts to the region. The U.S. State Department, while not yet confirming the exact number of missing Americans, said it was closely monitoring the situation and sending a disaster response adviser. The department also announced $500,000 in humanitarian assistance through Catholic Relief Services for affected communities. India, Canada, Britain, Japan, and Malaysia all reported missing citizens as well.

Rescue operations were hampered by the destruction itself. In one video from a bus in Bidur, a passenger captured the moment the surge appeared in the distance—people screaming, vehicles attempting to flee, the chaos of an unstoppable force. In other footage shared by Nepali police, entire sections of road and buildings had simply vanished. The disaster had unfolded in minutes, but the search for survivors and the recovery of the dead would take far longer. As night fell and rescue teams worked by whatever light they could muster, the full human cost of the glacier's collapse was still being measured.