Nepal flash flood death toll exceeds 750 as 3,000 remain missing; tunnel rescues underway

On Wednesday, a section of glacier high in the Himalayas gave way. The bedrock beneath it collapsed with such force that seismographs registered a magnitude 5.2 earthquake. Rock and meltwater surged downward into the valleys below, swelling rivers into torrents that swept across Nepal and Tibet with almost no warning. By Saturday, the death toll had climbed to 750, with roughly 3,000 people still unaccounted for. Nepal's disaster agency counted 734 dead and 2,498 missing within its borders. Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing on their side of the border, including more than a hundred Nepalis and citizens from a dozen other nations.

Four days after the initial surge, rescue operations were still grinding forward against the weather and the terrain. In Nuwakot, one of the hardest-hit districts, helicopters resumed flights on Saturday morning after fog and clouds had grounded them earlier. Some aircraft carried supplies—instant noodles, rice, crackers, blankets—into the disaster zone. Others returned carrying survivors, a handful per trip, some on stretchers. A Nepali Army official told CBS News that helicopters could complete roughly 15 round trips per hour, totaling about 500 flights daily. So far, more than 3,700 people had been pulled to safety. Outside an army camp near Nuwakot, families waited for word of their missing relatives, scanning lists and photographs, hoping for a name or a face.

The most urgent crisis was unfolding underground. More than 100 workers were believed trapped inside tunnels at two hydropower construction sites—Trishuli 3A and 3B—buried under four to five feet of mud. By Saturday, rescuers had broken through at Trishuli 3A and begun pumping air into the tunnel. Excavation was underway. Specialized teams from India and China had arrived to assist. India brought "rat-hole" miners trained to navigate impossibly tight spaces. Nepal deployed its own mountain rescue experts, the same teams that aid climbers on Everest. Photographs showed workers wading through churned earth and stepping over boulders the size of houses. Priti Kharel, waiting for news of her brother Milan, an engineering geologist at a power company, said friends at the site had told her family he might still be there. "It's already four days," she said. "We want the government to rescue him as soon as possible."

In Kathmandu's main government hospital, the search for the missing had become a daily ritual of desperation. Families arrived before dawn, moving between the help desk and notice boards, clutching photographs, scanning lists of injured patients. By Saturday, around 1,600 missing persons had been registered at the hospital alone. Dil Maya Lama had traveled 80 miles from her home in Ramechhap to search for her 26-year-old brother, a driver for a hydropower company in Rasuwa. "I came here with the hope that I might find him," she said. "There is no information about him." Nelza Moktan was searching for her cousin, also a driver in the same district. "I feel hopeless. It has already been four days," she said. At a relief center in Nuwakot, military personnel taped sheets of paper listing dozens of missing people to a wall. Families crowded around them, scanning names, taking photographs, weeping. Rajesh Kumar Ram, searching for his son, spoke through tears: "I'm hopeful, by chance, that my son is somewhere. Maybe they find him stuck somewhere. I'm waiting for that moment only."

The Red Cross estimated that roughly 90,000 people had been affected by the flooding. Nepal's government issued a fresh warning on Sunday morning that water levels in the Bhotekoshi River were rising again, urging all personnel in rescue operations and residents in affected districts to exercise caution. A new glacier-fed lake, formed by the initial collapse, had begun to overflow high in the mountains. Chinese monitoring data showed the lake had shrunk by 32 feet from its peak on Thursday morning, but the threat of additional flooding remained.

Among the missing were approximately 90 Americans. Twenty-two of them—13 women and nine men, all adults—had been part of a pilgrimage organized by the Isha Foundation, a volunteer group founded by Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru Vasudev. The group was traveling to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus and Buddhists. One of the missing was Sridevi Vejella, whose husband Deepak Dandu told CBS News that the pilgrimage had been her lifelong dream. She was crossing from China into Nepal when the flood struck, part of a group at the Gyirong Port immigration complex. The Isha Foundation, which has organized pilgrimages for 21 years, said in a statement that in all those years, they had never lost a life. Leslie Crespi, a community liaison, said the foundation had done "as much outreach as we can through the State Department, through the embassy." Five Americans had made it to safety.

Scientists studying the disaster said the initial flooding was triggered when bedrock beneath a glacier collapsed, taking part of the glacier itself. Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz currently based in Bangladesh, examined satellite imagery and said "a lower part of a glacier has really come off." He warned that the Hindu Kush Himalayan region is warming rapidly, driving major changes in glaciers and mountain slopes. Around 78 percent of glacier area in the region, located between roughly 14,760 and 19,685 feet above sea level, is highly exposed to warming. "What happened yesterday is unfortunately the new normal," Steiner said. "It's going to get worse from here onwards." Nepal's Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said the country needed greater research to understand the changing dynamics of the Himalayan ecosystem and the risks those changes pose to a landlocked nation bordered by India and China.

International aid was flowing in. The U.S. State Department announced more than $3.6 million in humanitarian assistance, including three months of emergency food aid designed to help up to 10,000 households. Nepal had received over 57 metric tons of relief supplies from India, with additional aid arriving from China, Japan, Australia and other countries. Khanal spoke by phone with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, and both agreed to increase the sharing of real-time hydrological data. Wang said China had shared disaster imagery, satellite data, and early warnings about upstream barrier lakes. The search for survivors continued, measured in helicopter trips and tunnel excavations, in hospital lists and photographs taped to walls, in families waiting for word that might never come.