Nepal-China flooding latest: Rescue efforts resume after newly formed lake threatens fresh deluge | CNN

Dozens of Americans and other foreign nationals are among at least 1,300 people unaccounted for. Follow for live updates.

• 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. At least 2,500 people are missing in total, 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 managed to escape 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.

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.

“There was one on a lower level that was swept away, so those people were all killed,” said Raja.

“We were still trying to figure out what exactly happened,” she added. “We really couldn’t think at that point.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

At least 93,000 people have been affected by flash floods on the Nepal-China border, the Red Cross said on Friday, as rescuers battled 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.”

The threat of secondary flooding and monsoon-fueled storms has delayed rescue efforts as weather conditions remain unpredictable.

One senior UN worker called for “vigilance” in the coming days.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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 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.

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.

Here’s what we know so far about what caused the catastrophic flooding and why it was so deadly:

An enormous chunk of glacier around 2,000 feet wide sheared off Langtang Lirung mountain in northern Nepal Wednesday, accompanied by a huge landslide, according to satellite analysis.

It sent a flood wave through the steep mountain valleys on the Nepal-China border, so powerful it was initially recorded as an earthquake.

This torrent was made up not just of water but was also loaded with silt, sand, gravel and giant boulders, which all moved together as a single fluid.

It was like “liquid concrete” and impossible to outrun, Hatim Sharif, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told CNN. The material hits a building with roughly twice the force of water, when traveling at the same speed, Sharif told CNN.

Its composition also makes rescue efforts more hazardous. The debris can hold water for a long time, making it unpredictable and treacherous. Depth is another issue. The sediment left behind is many feet thick in places, meaning searching for people “is done by probing and by hand, and it is very slow,” he added.

A big concern is that fresh rain could make everything move again.

Nepal has resumed rescue operations in areas impacted by devastating flash flooding following a brief pause amid fears of a fresh deluge of water, Reuters reported an army spokesperson as saying.

China has also restarted downstream rescue operations following a pause for the same reason, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported, after flood risks were deemed to be “manageable.”

Operations had been temporarily paused due to a barrier lake breaking its banks, causing water to overflow and sparking fears of more flash flooding.

However, later on, officials in both China and Nepal said the immediate risk from the swollen barrier lake was diminishing, as the water began to drain, lowering the risk of a sudden new cascade of water.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang has lamented the “significant loss of life” caused by Wednesday’s flooding disaster, urging officials to spare no effort in locating survivors.

By Friday afternoon, the official death toll on the Chinese side stood at five, with more than 550 still missing.

Li was dispatched as an envoy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the country’s disaster-stricken regions, and has been staying at the border town of Shigatse since Thursday afternoon to direct relief efforts.

“The disaster has caused significant loss of life and left many people missing. It is deeply distressing,” Li was quoted as saying, in a readout published by state news agency Xinhua on Friday afternoon.

Li urged officials to “make every possible effort to locate those still missing.”

“As long as there is even the slightest glimmer of hope of finding survivors, (we) have to make every possible effort.”

Signs of despair and heartbreak hung heavy Friday outside the army barracks serving as Nepal’s emergency response centre.

Outside the compound, on the wall of a hut, several pieces of paper were taped up, containing names and dates of birth. A desperate crowd pressed forward, tracing names on the notices with trembling fingers, searching for their loved ones.

Further along, relatives searching for those missing called out their names and phones numbers to two soldiers sitting at a bench the other side of the wire, log books in front of them.

Those injured in the disaster lay on temporary beds set up under blue canvas tents. Stacks of bottled water lay around and young children skipped around. One young child drank juice from a carton.

Authorities had rescued about 900 people yesterday, General Rajaram Basnet told CNN. All were from Timure and Syaphrubesi in the most-affected Rasuwa district, near the Chinese border, devastated by the deluge, he said.

Basnet said he’d “never seen a disaster of this scale” before. Rescue operations could be hampered, he said, due to forecasted rain and other complications over the next few days.

119 of those flown out were 92 Indians, 13 Chinese, 8 Koreans, 2 Italians, 2 Americans and 2 Italians.

But hundreds of Nepalis are still missing. A man who had screamed through the fence, hoping for any information at all, claimed too much effort had been spent on trying to locate and rescue foreigners, including those working at hydropower stations as well as pilgrims on their way to Tibet.

Meanwhile, Kapur Singh Tamang, one of the workers at a hydropower station, landed safely at the barracks after being rescued by helicopter. He was ushered away by police to a vehicle that would take him to his home in Hetauda in Makwanpur district.

As the main gate parted to admit ambulances and military vehicles, it offered fleeting glimpses of the anxious crowd waiting outside for answers.

The immediate risk from a swollen barrier lake is diminishing, officials in both China and Nepal say, after rescue operations were suspended over fears of further flooding.

A barrier lake created following Wednesday’s catastrophic flooding near the Nepal-China border broke its banks on Friday.

But officials say the lake is gradually draining, lowering the risk of a sudden new cascade of water.

Zhou Zhidong, from China Aneng Group’s Third Engineering Bureau in China, said water from the barrier lake began flowing out on Friday morning.

Compared with the high water-storage level early Thursday, the lake’s water level has fallen by around 10 meters and the risk is gradually decreasing, he said, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Chinese authorities have been warning the dam created during Wednesday’s landslide could breach and cause more flooding downstream as a lake developed behind it.

In Nepal, more than 13,000 police and army personnel were mobilized in Rasuwa region to respond if disaster struck for the second time this week, a spokesperson for the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority told CNN.

But the spokesperson, who did not give their name, also maintained a sudden deluge was unlikely.

Officials in Nepal warned earlier Friday of a new flood risk, urging residents and rescuers in the area to be on high alert and seek safety if they sense danger.

In a warning posted earlier Friday, a spokesperson for the disaster agency said there had been reports of “muddy sludge rising which risks causing more flooding.”

A barrier lake is a body of water formed when debris dams up a river. This lake formed following Wednesday’s devastating flooding and landslide.