Here's the latest
• Rescue efforts: Authorities are closely monitoring a second newly formed lake spotted in aerial footage of Nepal’s flood zone, adding to concerns about further flooding. Earlier, Nepal and China restarted rescue operations in areas devastated by flash flooding, after a pause sparked by fears a barrier lake could unleash another deluge.
• Death toll climbs: More than 500 people have been killed in Nepal, according to authorities. Around 2,500 people are missing across China and Nepal, including dozens of Americans and other foreign nationals. Two of the only known US survivors told CNN the water hit like a “tsunami” but they narrowly escaped to higher ground.
• On the ground: CNN teams have witnessed devastated neighborhoods and families’ anguish as they learned the worst news of their loved ones from lists and photos on a morgue wall. Monsoon-fueled storms will continue to pop up across the area through this weekend.
UK sends rapid response team to Nepal
The UK has deployed a rapid response team to Nepal to support the British citizens and their families affected by the catastrophic floods.
Crisis response staff will arrive in Kathmandu on Saturday to reinforce consular operations, the UK Foreign Office said. The deployment is part of the country’s efforts to respond to the disaster in Nepal, including £5 million ($6.77 million) of humanitarian assistance for relief and recovery efforts.
British staff being deployed will help British nationals arriving at and departing from the airport and support those looking for information about missing relatives. They will also work with families in the UK who are worried about their loved ones in affected areas, the Foreign Office said.
“We will do absolutely everything we can to support British nationals and their families,” Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a video posted to X.
Rescue operations resume along Nepal-China border. Here's where things stand
Crews from Nepal and China have resumed their rescue operations in areas impacted by devastating flash flooding, officials said. The urgent efforts were paused after a barrier lake created by the landslide broke its banks, causing water to overflow and sparking fears of more flooding.
Now, a second newly formed lake has been observed in aerial footage of the flood zone in Nepal.
The death toll from Wednesday’s catastrophic flooding has risen to at least 579 people in Nepal, the country’s disaster authority said. More than 1,900 people are still missing, including hundreds of foreigners.
The toll is expected to rise as emergency workers have still not been able to reach parts of the remote region yet.
Here’s where things stand:
- At least seven people have been confirmed dead on the Chinese side, with 554 missing, according to the state news agency Xinhua. There is less information on the human toll of the disaster from the Tibet region, and China’s social media censorship machine appears to have stopped videos of the disaster filmed on the ground from appearing across platforms.
- Authorities in Nepal have been closely monitoring the two lakes formed by the landslide, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed staffer from Nepal’s Disaster Management Authority. The first lake was draining, but the second lake was swelling in size with fresh rainfall expected — overtaking the first in terms of surface area.
- Another challenge could be the weather this weekend. Monsoon-fueled storms will continue to pop up across the disaster area through the next few days.
- At least 93,000 people have been affected by flash floods, the Red Cross said. Thousands of homes were destroyed by the disaster, David Fisher, the Nepal delegation head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Geneva.
- Around 90 Americans are still missing and five have been evacuated, US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said. The US is sending $500,000 in aid to Nepal, including food, and the first trucks carrying the assistance are on the way, Pigott said.
- Signs of despair and heartbreak hung heavy outside the army barracks serving as Nepal’s emergency response center. Several pieces of paper were taped up, containing names and dates of birth of loved ones who are missing. There is also a rapidly growing registry of missing people outside the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu.
See what it’s like inside the barracks:
CNN's Hanako Montgomery reports from the Nepali army barracks that is serving as the country's emergency response center after deadly flash flooding killed at least 538 in Nepal and has left over 1,300 people unaccounted for.
CNN’s Sophie Tanno, Lex Harvey, Bo Gu, Ross Adkin, Hanako Montgomery, Dan Campisi, Balmukunda Humagain, Nishant Khanal, Sana Noor Haq, Chris Dolce, Kaanita Iyer, Kara Fox and August Phillips contributed reporting.
The post was updated with the latest details on the death toll on the Chinese side of the border.
UN says 160,000 women and girls impacted by floods and at high risk for exploitation
Women and girls impacted by the floods are at a high risk for violence and exploitation, UN Women said Friday, warning that disasters worsen existing gender inequalities.
Nearly 160,000 women and girls living in Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts have been directly or indirectly affected by the disaster, according to the UN body.
While the full scale of the impact is still emerging, Patricia Fernandez-Pacheco, UN Women Representative to Nepal, said that one thing is clear.
“What we do know is that existing risks for women and girls skyrocket when disasters hit. More women and girls are exploited and abused. More women and girls go hungry and without medicine when resources are scarce. There is even evidence from previous disasters to suggest women are more likely to die than men,” she added.
Following a disaster, women face heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and rapid impoverishment alongside taking on a disproportionate share of domestic duties and the burden of water-fetching, the UN said.
In several districts badly affected by the floods, a low literacy rate could further complicate women’s ability to register for or access relief assistance independently.
UN Women has appealed for $2 million to ensure safety and resources are allocated for the affected women and girls.
At medical center in Kathmandu, loved ones list the missing and hope for good news
Friends and family of people missing in the Nepal floods have traveled to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in the capital of Kathmandu to add names to a rapidly growing registry and search a list of survivors in hopes of good news.
CNN’s Will Ripley has been reporting from the medical center, where the handwritten list of survivors being treated stands at 31 names. The nearby registry of the missing has well over a thousand names, he said, with people lined up to add more.
The most recent update from Nepal’s national disaster agency said at least 1,924 people are missing across the country.
Just a few minutes away from the hospital, Ripley reported, “there’s a morgue with a much larger wall of photos of dead bodies, and a much larger crowd of people looking at these photos of dead bodies, trying to see if they can identify their loved ones there.”
Mapping the landslide that led to deadly flash flooding at the Nepal-China border
Rescuers in Nepal and China are racing to recover survivors in the area devastated by flash flooding, as fears of a secondary deluge hang over the region.
Authorities say over 500 people have died and 2,500 are missing. More than 90,000 people were impacted by the flooding, according to the Red Cross.
CNN is tracking developments, with maps and satellite imagery:
“All I could think of was the people that were gone,” survivor tells CNN
An Indian American couple who survived the flood have recounted how they narrowly managed to escape to higher ground and were eventually airlifted to safety by the Nepali army.
Anjana Raja, 52, and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, 56, told CNN’s Will Ripley that they hiked up a mountain to an army camp, where a number of survivors congregated.
They were later told that the Nepali government was going to send a helicopter to airlift them out, but it would land at the top of the “very tall mountain.”
“It was very, very hard to climb,” said Raja. “Rocky, slippery, marshy, thorns all over the bushes.”
Raja also said she slipped and fell off the narrow path a couple of times.
“I thought ‘that’s it, I’m gonna die,’” she said.
Eventually they made it to the top, where they sheltered from the rain overnight in a goat shed crowded with survivors, with no space to lie down and sleep.
“All I could think of was the people that were gone,” said Venkatesan.
“All I was thinking about was how big this was and how did we manage to survive,” he added.
They were then airlifted to safety by helicopter the next day.
“The army did a wonderful job,” said Raja. “They were really amazing.”
At least 579 dead as number of missing jumps — but uncertainty remains over true figures
Authorities in Nepal have been giving regular updates on the dead and missing from the devastating floods, but there remains uncertainty over them and the expectation they could rise much further.
In their latest update, the country’s national disaster agency said that 579 people had died, with 1,924 people missing, including 517 foreign nationals. This is a jump of nearly 1,000 missing from the previous update.
Nepal police said earlier Friday that at least 547 people have died, and that 1,473 people are injured.
The discrepancy in the death toll at this stage in the disaster is normal. Different agencies are battling chaotic and stressful conditions, particularly in the acute rescue stage that has disrupted communication networks. With infrastructure heavily damaged, official tolls are likely to lag behind one another.
There is less information on the human toll of the disaster from Tibet, and China’s social media censorship machine appears to have stopped videos of the disaster filmed on the ground from appearing across platforms.
As of 3 p.m. Friday local time, five people had been confirmed dead and 558 remained missing on the Chinese side, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
A US state department spokesperson told CNN that 90 Americans remain unaccounted for and that five, so far, have been safely evacuated.
US State Department says 90 Americans still missing
A US State Department spokesperson told CNN on Friday that around 90 Americans are still missing and five have been evacuated following the catastrophic floods in Nepal and China.
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott told CNN’s Sara Sidner that the State Department is not currently aware of any deaths of US citizens.
Pigott also highlighted that the US is sending $500,000 in aid to Nepal, including food, and that the first trucks carrying the assistance is on the way. Meanwhile, the UK has pledged nearly $6.8 million in assistance and the European Union said it would provide $2.3 million in aid.
In a post on X, the US Embassy in Nepal said that Catholic Relief Services, which is working with Caritas Nepal, “will deliver more than 2.5 metric tons of food supplies, 500 blankets, 500 mosquito nets, and 500 insulating foam sheets for temporary shelter flooring to two school locations in Rasuwa.”
Second lake forms near Nepal flood zone as rescuers wary of new deluge
A second newly formed lake has been observed in aerial footage of the flood zone in Nepal, after rescue efforts were briefly suspended over fears of further deluges from the first known body of water.
Authorities in the Himalayan nation have been closely monitoring the two lakes, formed by Wednesday’s devastating landslide, Reuters reported Friday, citing an unnamed staffer from Nepal’s Disaster Management Authority.
Imagery recorded by a Chinese rescue team showed pools of brown water amassing near a local basin, with water draining from the first lake. The second lake, which was also visible, was swelling in size with fresh rainfall expected – overtaking the first in terms of surface area.
Both bodies of water sit upstream of an area where hundreds of people were killed by catastrophic flash floods on the Nepal-China border on Wednesday. Those torrents carried silt, sand, gravel and giant boulders through steep mountain valleys along the border.
So far, Nepali emergency crews have been relying on satellite imagery to keep abreast of conditions, the Disaster Management Authority staffer said, adding that officials plan on installing cameras and sensors downstream.
Earlier on Friday, Chinese authorities called off crucial response efforts citing rising water levels from a newly-formed barrier lake – increasing the risk of another flood or landslide. Officials in Nepal had also delayed relief operations after spiked fears of a fresh water cascade.
Ukrainian family missing in Nepal after traveling for spiritual retreat
A Ukrainian family is missing following the flood in Nepal, with the country’s consulate unable to provide any information on their whereabouts, according to the boyfriend of the youngest member of the party.
Sofia Oloviatenko, 19, had traveled to Nepal to attend a spiritual retreat with her mother Anna, 49 and her brother Mykyta, 21, said Maksym Goncharov in an interview with CNN on Friday.
Goncharov, 23, was last in touch with the family, from the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, at 7.30 a.m. Nepali time Wednesday (9.45 p.m. ET Tuesday).
Since then, he’s not been unable to find out anything about them. “Nobody knows anything. I contacted the Ukrainian Consulate in Nepal, but they haven’t provided me with any information as to whether they crossed the border at the checkpoint or not – the one that appears very frequently in the videos,” he said. “Because if we look at what happened there, it was a truly terrible natural disaster.”
Goncharov said he has been told that rescue teams have started excavations at the border post, and he is trying to get permission to travel to Nepal and join the search efforts himself.
“She’s someone very close to my heart, someone I love madly, and I can’t go on without her,” he said. “She’s the most precious thing in my life.”
Over 90,000 people impacted by Nepal flash floods, according to Red Cross
At least 93,000 people have been affected by flash floods on the Nepal-China border, the Red Cross said on Friday, as rescuers battle to reach remote rural areas in the Himalayas.
Thousands of homes were destroyed by the disaster, David Fisher, the Nepal delegation head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
Fisher urged aid agencies to plan beyond “immediate survival” and ensure “that people are not living under tarpaulin and tents months and months from now.”
Many survivors are staying in schools and government buildings, according to Fisher. For Nepali relief staffers juggling professional responsibilities with fears for their own families, the psychological trauma is twofold, he said.
The threat of secondary flooding and monsoon-fueled storms has also delayed rescue efforts as weather conditions remain unpredictable.
One senior UN worker called for “vigilance” in the coming days.
This post has been updated with a quote from Fisher’s interview with CNN.
Chinese families turn to social media desperate for news of missing loved ones
Chinese families are looking to social media for information about missing loved ones, more than two days devastating floods hit the China-Nepal border.
“The whole family is very worried,” a woman in Sichuan province told CNN. She had lost contact midday Wednesday with her brother, who was working in the area of Tibet that was most impacted.
Her brother was working on railway construction about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from Gyirong Port before going missing, the woman posted on the Chinese social media platform RedNote. The port was engulfed by a mudslide on Wednesday and remains the epicenter of rescue efforts.
The woman, who declined to be quoted by name, said she had already reported her brother’s disappearance to local police and had yet to receive any updates.
“What’s the situation at Gyirong Port? My sister works there and I haven’t been able to reach her…” read another post on the platform from a user in Yunnan province, who in a later post said they traveled to into the neighboring region of Tibet.
China’s National Immigration Administration acknowledged there are port employees missing in a Friday social media post.
Information from impacted areas in China has been slow to emerge and is dominated by official state agencies in China’s tightly controlled media environment. That cuts a contrast to Nepal, where authorities and other sources have provided more frequent updates.
China’s social media censorship machine appears to have kicked in soon after the disaster struck, with videos of the disaster filmed on the ground removed from platforms — a situation that rights groups say makes it harder for families to get a sense of their loved ones’ whereabouts.
As of 3 p.m. Friday local time, five people had been confirmed dead and 558 remained missing on the Chinese side, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
China names border officer who helped people flee as one of those missing
A young Chinese police officer purportedly seen guiding people away from the oncoming wall of water in security camera footage is among the missing, state media said on Friday.
Huang Peng, 35, had worked at the Gyirong border checkpoint for 13 years and was described by his colleagues as a “reliable, hardworking, warm-hearted, and kind comrade,” according to The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of China’s Communist Party. He’s the first person on the Chinese side of the border to be named as missing.
Huang was “unconcerned with the torrent behind him” as he “waved, shouted, and guided people” away from danger at the Gyirong border crossing between China and Nepal, The People’s Daily said.
China’s official death toll stands at five, with another 558 people missing. No information has yet been released about the identity of the other victims.
Information from the Chinese side of the border has been moving much more slowly than in Nepal. Social media censors swiftly removed videos showing a building at Tibet’s Gyirong land border port engulfed by floodwaters, while initial video in online news sources skewed toward those showing the impact just over the border.
A clip later published by Chinese state media showed a zoomed-in version of the security camera footage that purportedly shows Huang directing people away from the floods.
US survivors tell CNN the floodwaters were "like a tsunami"
Two of the only known US nationals to survive the flood told CNN that the water from the catastrophic floods came down the mountain “like a tsunami.”
Indian-American couple Anjana Raja, 52, and Pattabiraman Venkatesan, 56, were on a guided tour in Nepal when the disaster struck.
They spoke to CNN’s Will Ripley in Kathmandu telling him that they only survived because their tour guide rushed them up the mountain to higher ground.
More storms are possible this weekend
Monsoon-fueled storms will continue to pop up across the disaster area through this weekend.
The storms are hit-or-miss, so some places will experience deluges while others stay dry. You can see this happen from Thursday afternoon into Friday afternoon in the satellite loop above.
The Rasuwa district flood zone in Nepal has been mostly spared from widespread storms in the past 24 hours, but one location picked up about 1 inch of rain.
Whether any storms billow up over the area this weekend is hard to pinpoint, but the potential is there for localized drenching downpours.
Any storms that form on Saturday in Rasuwa could drop up to 2 inches (50 mm) of rain. Totals could reach up to 4 inches (100 mm) in isolated spots.
"I lost my hope," says Nepali man searching for missing staff
The Nepali owner of a transport company who lost contact with a number of his drivers said he gave up hope of finding them after being shown aerial photos of the area where they were working.
Sunil Shrestha told Reuters that he heard about the flood and tried to call his drivers repeatedly, but received no answer. “That really panicked me,” he said.
Shrestha, whose company also operates a helicopter, said he sent his pilot the last GPS location of one of the vehicles and told him to go and check on the situation there.
When the pilot returned, he showed Shrestha a number of photos that showed no sign of any vehicles in the area. “So at the time I lost my hope,” he said.
Shrestha is now trying to find out what whether his staff are alive or dead. “They are like a family, you know. They are very good people, very humble, very nice, always punctual, never gave me trouble,” he said. “Always like a family, you know. Friends and family.”
Shrestha also hinted at the wider impact of Wednesday’s disaster. “They are the main pillar of their family,” he added.
She went to buy groceries. Her mother never saw her again
Bhegar Tamang’s daughter Yangri set off to buy goods from her local store in her Nepali village edging the border with China on Wednesday.
That was the last time Tamang saw Yangri, who was whisked away by ferocious flash floods that ripped through this part of the Himalayan nation earlier this week.
The 68-year-old also lost her husband and her son, who worked at a local hydropower plant, in the flash floods that hit the region on Wednesday, erasing entire communities.
“I rushed to high ground and I survived,” she told CNN on Friday. “I don’t know where to go. There’s no way to return home.”
Tamang is now sheltering at a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts of Kathmandu where she was evacuated along with around 200 other survivors of the flooding that hit the area on Wednesday after a huge section of glacier sheared off a mountain in northern Nepal.
Another survivor from the same area, Rildi Tamang, recalled the final glance she shared with her husband, Pema, before he was swept away on Wednesday. The 70-year-old widow told CNN that only one in three residents had survived in her village.
“I lost my husband. Now, I can’t even locate where my house was,” Tamang said on Friday at the monastery, where she was also seeking shelter after her home was destroyed in the deluge.
“I ran and survived. He couldn’t escape.”
Nepal death toll rises to 538, disaster authority says
At least 538 people have been killed by colossal flash floods that tore through Nepal earlier this week, the country’s disaster authority reported on Friday.
That death toll is expected to climb, with another 1,300 people unaccounted for and parts of the remote region yet to be reached by emergency workers.
CNN’s Lex Harvey and Ranjeeta Johnson contributed reporting.
China's first rescue team reaches affected region
China’s first professional rescue team has finally reached the area most affected by the catastrophic landslides.
A total of 16 firefighters and one rescue dog made it to the Gyirong port, on the China-Nepal border, on Friday afternoon, according to state media Xinhua.
The rescue mission had been suspended earlier due to the fear of secondary disasters caused by the overflowing barrier lake upstream of the town.
The team was using a “water, land and air” approach in the mission. Some rescuers were using inflatable boats to navigate the river, two rescue teams were crossing the mountains by foot, while heavy-lift drones are transporting firefighters into affected areas.
At least 489 killed in Nepal, police say
The number of people confirmed dead in flash flooding in Nepal has risen to at least 489, police said Friday, an update on the previous figure of 469.
It comes as search and rescue operations in both Nepal and China have resumed following a brief pause due to further flooding fears.
Meanwhile, a tourism ministry source told Reuters that 117 tourists had been rescued in Nepal flooding, including 85 Indians, 16 Chinese, nine South Koreans, two Italians and two US nationals.
