Around 8:40 on the morning of August 26, a section of glacier collapsed on the north side of the Langtang range, near Nepal’s border with Tibet, three minutes after a magnitude 4.4 earthquake on the Chinese side. The impact registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, which the U.S. Geological Survey initially logged as a separate earthquake before concluding it was the landslide itself. Scientists say warming likely helped trigger the glacier’s collapse.
The debris entered the Lhende Khola, a small river that crosses into Nepal. It blocked the river roughly 20 kilometers upstream from the China-Nepal border crossing at Rasuwagadhi. When the blockage eventually broke, water levels in the Trishuli River surged by as much as nine meters in just 30 minutes.
It is now the deadliest flood disaster on record in Nepal. The confirmed death toll stood at 987 in Nepal as of the morning of September 2, with 16 more dead in Tibet. Roughly 4,500 people remain missing on both sides of the border. Among them are hydropower workers, customs and immigration staff, security personnel, trekking guides, and some 700 foreign nationals, including pilgrims bound for Mount Kailash.
According to UNICEF, 17,000 children are affected, 18 schools were destroyed, and 20 more damaged. The government’s preliminary damage estimate is 200 billion rupees ($1.3 billion).
