Here's the latest
• Rescue effort: Around 3,000 people are still missing following Wednesday’s catastrophic flooding on the Nepal-China border. Helicopter operations paused for nightfall as remote areas remain hard to reach — including sites and tunnels where hundreds of hydropower workers are unaccounted for.
• Grim toll: More than 670 people have died in Nepal and at least seven in China, where officials have been slow to issue updates. Nepali authorities are struggling to cope with the mounting number of bodies.
• On the ground: Survivors are returning to mud-caked ruins and searching for belongings. Video of a Nepali girl’s dramatic rescue brought a glimmer of hope. At a Chinese border crossing, a child’s toy bunny served as a searing reminder of the impacted families.
• Agonizing wait: Loved ones gather daily at medical centers and morgues to search for information on victims. Families in the US and across the world await word on missing travelers.
Dramatic video shows little girl pulled from rubble in Nepal days after flood
Nepal’s Armed Police Force (APF) has released dramatic video of a young girl’s rescue from a collapsed building. The girl was rescued Friday around 6 p.m. local time, according to APF, at an altitude of 2,200 meters near the Timure border patrol post.
Rescuers took her to a rescue camp that evening. According to an APF spokesperson, the girl only spoke on Saturday morning after resting overnight and eating some food. She told rescuers her name was Manisha and that she was 6 years old.
She is currently receiving treatment in Rasuwa. APF doesn’t know the whereabouts of her parents.
Anderson Cooper reports from Kathmandu as rescue efforts wind down for the night
Rescue operations in Nepal have largely paused for the night after a day of frantic search efforts across the region devastated by flash flooding on Wednesday.
Over 9,000 Nepali Army forces have been deployed for the operations. Aerial missions have been paused overnight, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports from Kathmandu, noting that it would be too dangerous for helicopters to navigate remote areas in the darkness and rain.
Crews have been scouring the region for survivors and delivering aid and supplies as nearly 2,500 people in Nepal remain missing, according to the country’s Disaster Management Authority.
Reaching remote areas and clearing the countless roads destroyed or blocked by the flooding has become a major challenge for rescue operations, Cooper reports.
It's past midnight in Kathmandu. The flooding death toll rose Saturday as search continues
The death toll continues to rise as rescuers search for the roughly 3,000 people still missing across China and Nepal after catastrophic flooding on Wednesday.
According to Nepali authorities, at least 675 people have been killed in the country. And another 2,498 people were still missing as of Saturday evening local time, Nepal’s Disaster Management Authority reported. At least seven people have died in China, where official reports have been slow to come out of Tibet.
Catch up on the latest:
- Missing workers: Nearly 900 Nepali employees who had been working on hydropower projects are missing in the flooding, according to the country’s Independent Power Producers’ Association. About 361 workers from the industry have been rescued so far, the group said.
- Search and rescue efforts: Nepal’s Army said more than 2,500 people have been rescued by aerial evacuation, including 216 foreign nationals. At least 200 others have been rescued by ground. Some remote areas remain difficult to reach as teams try to access them by helicopter.
- Communities destroyed: CNN drone footage showed just half a bridge left standing and damaged homes in a mud-caked valley of Nepal’s Nuwakot district. The sound of heavy machinery filled another village in the region as excavators dug through rubble and residents searched for belongings.
- A searing image: A bunny toy covered in mud was found washed up on the riverbank at a rescue site near Gyirong Port, a Chinese border crossing with Nepal, according to the state media station Tibet Radio and Television. No sign of survivors has been found at the site since the rescue team arrived on Friday.
- Grieving from afar: Luminous, yellow candles lit a courtyard today in Sydney, where dozens of community members, Nepali diaspora and Australian officials gathered to commemorate those killed. And the Nepali community in Long Island, New York, came together to hold a vigil as they wait to hear news about missing friends and loved ones. In Bloomfield, New Jersey, neighbors have been stunned to learn that the parents of a 9-year-old boy are missing following the flooding.
CNN’s Bhadra Sharma, Sana Noor Haq, Rebekah Riess, Ross Adkin, Hanako Montgomery, Daniel Campisi, Sophie Tanno and Sylvie Zhuang contributed reporting.
Nepali flood survivors return to find community in ruins
Flood survivors have started to return to Trishuli, a village in Nepal’s hard-hit Nuwakot district, to collect belongings and survey damaged buildings among the piles of rubble and mud.
The sound of heavy machinery has filled the village as excavators sift through the wreckage left by this week’s devastating floods.
Colorado Springs business owner awaiting word from missing uncle caught in Nepali flood
Santosh Pandey and his father co-own Little Nepal Grocery in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They are trying to go about running their business while devastated by the news of the flooding in their home country and worrying over friends and family they haven’t been able to reach since it happened.
“I was totally devastated when I heard the news, and the whole family, including my dad and my mom, they were all saddened,” Pandey told CNN affiliate KRDO.
Pandey said his family has learned that his uncle was among those swept away by the surging waters. “He’s missing. He was swept by the flood, and we don’t know his whereabouts,” the co-owner of Little Nepal Grocery said.
While trying to contact loved ones in Nepal, the family, in conjunction with the Nepalese Association of Colorado Springs, is also working to rally local assistance for flood victims.
“We are trying to be together, gather … whatever the support we can gather from the community and send it back home,” Pandey told KRDO.
How families are searching for missing loved ones in Nepal
CNN’s Anderson Cooper has been reporting from a hospital and morgue in Kathmandu, Nepal, where families are trying to find information on their missing loved ones.
Here’s what we’ve learned on the ground:
CNN's Anderson Cooper reports from a hospital and morgue in Kathmandu, Nepal, where families are searching for information on their missing loved ones. Catastrophic flooding has devastated the region, leaving people scrambling to find victims.
More than 670 people killed in Nepal flash floods, local officials say
At least 675 people have been killed in Nepal following convulsive landslides along the Himalayan region on Wednesday, according to Nepali authorities, with thousands more residents missing.
As of Saturday evening local time, another 2,498 people are missing in the country, Nepal’s Disaster Management Authority reported.
The official death toll climbed by nearly 50 people over the space of six hours, according to a CNN tally of figures published by local officials. However, that figure is expected to rise even further, as critical rescue and recovery efforts are ongoing.
Nepali authorities are struggling to cope with the mounting number of recovered bodies. In the video below, officials prepare a mass burial site in the Chitwan district of Nepal:
Chinese foreign minister says floods present “most serious cross-border disaster” in years
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi noted the “complexity and difficulty” of emergency operations after colossal landslides careened through the Nepal-China border on Wednesday, unleashing catastrophic destruction.
Wang discussed the “serious debris-flow disaster” in a phone call with Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal on Friday, forecasting an “unprecedented” scale of relief efforts in the coming days.
More than 600 people were killed in the disaster, which knocked out Nepal’s burgeoning electricity industry, left hundreds of Nepali employees trapped inside construction sites and tunnels, and thousands more people missing across flood-stricken towns and villages. Nepali people have long-faced earthquakes, floods and landslides — phenomena exacerbated by the human-caused climate crisis.
Both Nepali and Chinese officials will orient recovery efforts around “post-disaster reconstruction, disaster prevention and mitigation, and “response to climate change,” the Chinese ministry’s statement said.
Earlier Friday, the Chinese government dispatched a specialized crew to help with tunnel rescues in Nepal, the statement said, adding that “emergency cash assistance” and “disaster relief supplies” were also en route.
New Jersey couple on religious retreat missing in Nepal, their 9-year-old safe in India
Bloomfield, New Jersey, neighbors have been stunned to learn that the parents of a 9-year-old boy are missing following the catastrophic flooding on the Nepal-China border.
Bimalbhai Patel and his wife, Jaiminaben Patel, of Bloomfield, were in the region for a religious retreat when flooding and mudslides swept through the area, according to reporting from CNN affiliate WABC.
“I’m devastated because I know them and they’re very nice couple, very friendly. We get along very well,” their neighbor, Edna Thomas, said. “It’s shocking. I saw the videos and I stopped watching.”
The couple’s 9-year-old son is safe with relatives in India, family members told WABC in a statement, adding, “we urgently request the authorities to help locate and rescue them as soon as possible.”
“Whatever it is that we can do here, to support families of folks who’ve been impacted, to support anyone, really, we’re here for it. We’re here for them,” Bloomfield Mayor Jenny Mundell said.
Nepali survivor shows CNN team what remains of flood-stricken home
Along a devastated main street, underneath downed power lines and past bundles of corn hung out to dry, Sadip Nepal stood outside the wrecked home he and his family managed to flee just in time to save themselves.
Nepal was about to sit down to eat with his parents when he stepped outside onto a balcony and saw a torrent of water barreling into the village.
Inside the house, hardened mud 2 feet deep caked the ground floor and debris blocked the stairs. Flotsam from the deluge was scattered around: pieces of metal, rope, tree branches. Out in the back, two animal carcasses washed in by the river had begun to stink.
Nepal said there was “no chance” he could ever go back to live in the home he had been born in; there had been too much damage.
“We cannot do anything,” he said, holding back tears. “Now we have to start from zero.”
Sydney residents share “sorrow and grief” at candlelight vigil for Nepali communities
Luminous, yellow candles lit a courtyard today in Sydney, where dozens of community members, Nepali diaspora and Australian officials gathered to commemorate those killed by ferocious landslides along the Nepal-China border this week.
Young boys stood soundlessly with their hands folded in their laps, while others sat on the floor and bowed their heads in tribute during a moment of silence, as seen in Reuters video from the vigil.
One bystander, Nagendra Adhikari, honored his missing family members and those of a university friend, telling reporters, “We are sad for his family, we are still hoping for good news.”
Adhikari is one of thousands of individuals whose lives have been upended after catastrophic deluges ripped through the Himalayan region on Wednesday, killing more than 600 people, leaving thousands more missing and catapulting entire communities into oblivion. The powerful torrents buried villages, towns, bridges and roads, with heavy rainfall compounding the risk of renewed flooding and impeding sprawling rescue efforts
Another Sydney resident, C K Bhusal, said he wanted to share “our tears, sorrow and grief.”
898 Nepali hydropower workers missing in floods, data shows
Nearly 900 Nepali employees who had been working on hydropower projects are missing in the flooding, according to details compiled by the country’s Independent Power Producers’ Association.
About 361 workers from the industry have been rescued so far, the data shows.
The sudden deluge of water devastated dozens of hydropower projects that had been located near the Nepal-China border, many of which were situated in remote river gorges. The result is that many of the workers remain trapped in construction sites and tunnels.
Unable to reach them, the Nepali government has requested experts on tunnel rescues from India and China to help free the trapped workers. Teams from both countries arrived in Nepal today, while further personnel are expected.
“It’s a specific and specialized assistance from our friendly neighbors,” Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said at a news conference earlier today.
The floods have hit Nepal’s growing electricity industry as a result, with at least 12 hydropower projects left out of action due to the disaster, according to the Nepal Electricity Authority. Additionally, 15 hydropower projects that had been under construction are impacted.
Here's what we know so far about rescue efforts in Nepal
Search and rescue efforts remain ongoing in Nepal and China, as more than 3,000 people remain missing and at least 600 confirmed dead, after Wednesday’s devastating flash flooding.
Nepal’s army in an update today, said 2,650 people had been rescued in the country by aerial evacuation, including 216 foreign nationals, while 200 had been rescued by ground.
Around 8,300 Nepal army personnel have been deployed and searches, emergency medical treatment and aid distribution are ongoing, the army said.
Some remote areas remain difficult to reach with some teams attempting to access by helicopter. A CNN team heard helicopters flying from Trishuli barracks from around 4.30 a.m. local time today.
Meanwhile, crews from India, China and South Korea are being deployed to bolster relief operations. This includes five rescue personnel with expertise on tunnels who arrived in China from Nepal today, Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported, with an additional four on their way. The experts immediately joined rescue efforts at the tunnel of a hydropower station, Xinhua reported.
In total there are still about 900 people trapped in hydropower tunnels in Nepal, Sumnima Uddas, a Nepali Member of Parliament, said. “Time is really of the essence to search and rescue as many survivors as we can,” Uddas told CNN.
In another threat to rescue operations, academics and local officials have warned of the possibility of renewed torrents near the initial flood zone as the specter of rainfall looms.
In China, a bunny toy leaves vivid reminder of family lives upended by flood
A bunny soft toy covered in mud was found washed up on the riverbank at a rescue site near Gyirong Port, a Chinese border crossing with Nepal, according to the state media station Tibet Radio and Television.
No sign of survivors has been found at the site since the rescue team arrived on Friday. Video from the site shows the entire area covered in mud as a swift-flowing river carries many objects downstream.
“Though the bunny toy is so small, it carries a vivid record of life. It once accompanied countless warm everyday moments, now covered in mud, silently telling the story of the suddenness of this disaster,” the station said in its report.
“I shouldn’t talk in past tense yet,” says Virginia woman missing four family members
Mukti Patel has huddled with family and friends at her parents’ Richmond, Virginia, home since her dad, sister and two other relatives went missing in the catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border.
She knows the hotel they were staying in with their tour group on a two-week excursion to the region was swept away. But as she shared memories of them yesterday, she caught herself.
“I shouldn’t talk in past tense yet,” she said. “We don’t know anything.”
Patel, 27, said her dad, Umesh Kumar, 56, had wanted to make the trip for many years and traveled through India to Nepal, where he was joined by her sister, Akanksha, 32, and her sister’s husband, Ishan, 32.
Ishan’s mom, Shilpa, 59, was also on the trek. Ishan and Shilpa Patel have dual Canadian and US citizenship while Umesh Kumar and Akanksha Patel are Canadian citizens, according to Mukti Patel.
Akanksha Patel is a psychiatrist who wants to break stigma around mental health problems, her sister said.
“Everything I’ve done in life has been off the blueprint of my sister,” Mukti Patel said between tears in a phone interview. “There’s no ounce of meanness in her.”
Her father is a joyous person who helped victims of the Covid-19 pandemic, and her brother-in-law, an orthopedic surgeon, has brought great happiness to her sister’s life, she said.
Ishan Patel turned 32 on Wednesday, and the family called to wish him a happy birthday. That was their last contact.
Bridge destroyed and homes buried in mud in hard-hit Nepali valley
CNN drone footage is providing more perspective on the destruction in the Nuwakot district of Nepal after this week’s deadly floods. Aerial video from Devighat shows just half a bridge left standing and damaged homes in the mud-caked valley.
CNN spoke with a World Health Organization official Friday who said people are in dire need of support in the area after health facilities and entire villages were wiped out by the deluge.
Newly formed lake beside flood zone has been emptied, Chinese state media says
One of two new lakes near a flood zone along the Nepal-China border has been “essentially drained,” China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Earlier this week, regional officials raised the alarm over renewed torrents after sighting the two fresh lakes near the area where hundreds of people were killed on Wednesday.
As of Saturday evening local time, the first lake is “currently experiencing normal natural outflow,” CCTV said, citing China’s Ministry of Water Resources.
The formation of both bodies of water prompted Nepali and Chinese officials to temporarily halt critical emergency efforts on Friday over fears of another landslide.
A closer look at what caused the devastating Nepal-China floods
Scientists are still unpicking the exact causes of the devastating flooding on the Nepal-China border, but what we know so far is that the disaster began when a vast chunk of glacier sheared off the mountainside on Wednesday.
The glacier chunk plunged around 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) into the valley below, according to a team of international scientists, which has been poring over satellite images and other data.
The US Geological Survey says the event created the equivalent of a 5.2-magnitude earthquake.
A glacier collapse alone would not have been enough to generate such an enormous amount of energy, “so there had to be something else involved,” said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, who is part of the scientific group. They believe a landslide likely happened at the same time.
Scientists say there is still work to be done to establish exactly what happened and what made the flooding so deadly.
“Figuring out where that water came from is is actually probably the hardest thing about all this,” Shugar added.
Two lakes that subsequently formed beside the site of catastrophic landslides sparked fears of fresh flooding and prompted both China and Nepal to briefly pause rescue efforts.
Nepal’s foreign minister told a press conference today that the country remained on high alert for fresh flooding risks.
“The river systems and downstream flood risk are being continuously monitored,” Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said.
“Our systems are on high alert for any additional fraud risks, and all required coordination is in place.”
Son of Virginia man missing in Nepal keeps hope alive watching father's YouTube videos
Anil Goel, an avid hiker from Virginia, went missing when the floods struck during his multi-day hiking trip to Mount Kailash in Tibet near the Nepal-China border.
Goel’s hiking group was last known to have received their departure stamps on their passports to leave Nepal around 8:35 a.m., followed by some WhatsApp exchanges around the same time, his son, Anurag Goel, told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on “First of All” today.
Roughly 45 minutes later, the floods struck.
He is working with various local authorities and other affected families to aid in the search efforts.
“What’s been really helpful is communicating with other families that are also impacted, that are missing loved ones in the region, and understanding what these other families are doing, resources they’re utilizing,” Goel said. “But it’s impossible to know how we can go about identifying people that are being recovered, rescued from that region. That’s been a real challenge.”
Despite the challenges, he remains hopeful and encourages others to support the search.
Anurag Goel is also finding comfort in his father’s YouTube videos, posted from the trip, which highlight the beauty of the region. “I do try to … look at those videos and get more perspective on why it’s such a beloved area for many,” he told CNN.
Catch up: Rescue efforts stretch on for days as family members wait for news on loved ones
Nearly four days after deadly floods ravaged villages and towns along the Nepal-China border on Wednesday, survivors, police and government officials are reckoning with the scale of destruction. More than 600 people have been killed, homes buried to the ground and entire villages washed away in the aftermath.
Here’s what you need to know:
Immediate relief challenges
- Dayslong search: Dozens of family members coalesced around a hospital in the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, early Saturday, trying to spot their loved ones on a wall bearing photos of those who had died in the floods. The chance of survival within the first 48 to 72 hours of a climate-induced phenomenon, known as the “golden window,” are when paramedics are most likely to reach people trapped under debris alive. Some remote areas remain difficult to reach, clouding what officials know about the chance of survival there.
- A mass grave: Regional officials are struggling to keep abreast of the number of decomposing bodies that have been recovered, with mortuaries brimming at capacity. In one southern Nepali district — Chitwan — authorities will resort to burying hundreds of unidentified bodies in a mass grave, local police told CNN.
- Foreign governments step up: Personnel from India, China and South Korea are also being deployed to bolster relief operations in Nepal, where teams are trying to reach remote areas by helicopter.
Threat of unpredictable weather
- Risk of follow-up flood events: As the specter of heavy rainfall looms, academics and local officials have warned of renewed torrents near the initial flood zone. A combination of steep terrain, melting permafrost, damage from the first landslides and jammed debris is forming lakes, one UK-based researcher told CNN, which could produce a catastrophic new deluge.
Signs of hope
- Nearly 200 tourists rescued: Emergency crews in Nepal have located 187 overseas nationals, including 114 Indians, 27 Chinese people, 20 from South Korea and other citizens from the US, Europe, and the Gulf, the Nepal Tourism Board said in a bulletin on Saturday. Another 420 foreigners remain missing, the bulletin said.
CNN’s Bhadra Sharma, Sophie Tanno, Lex Harvey and Laura Sharman contributed reporting.
