NUWAKOT, Nepal, Aug 28 — A lake formed by a landslide on the Nepal-China border started to overflow today, triggering panic and putting at risk areas devastated by a flash flood two days ago as rescue efforts were briefly halted.
Wednesday's (August 26) catastrophic flood caused by a glacier collapse killed 489 people in Nepal and five in China's Tibet, with almost 1,000 more missing in the two countries.
A huge torrent of rock, ice, mud, and debris cascaded through Himalayan mountain river systems after the collapse, and also led to the formation of a lake where water continued to collect and rise.
Today, authorities and witnesses in Nepal said the lake's reservoir had topped 2.5 million cubic metres of water, up from the estimated 1.5 million to two million cubic metres recorded a day earlier, before overflowing into the Bhotekoshi River.
“We have received a notice saying that the lake has broken its banks. But we do not know how big it is and how high its water level is.
"We can see that the level of water in the river is rising," Narendra Pariyar, Nepal's most senior bureaucrat in the flood-hit Rasuwa district, told Reuters.
Reuters witnesses reported that people ran to higher ground carrying belongings as announcements warned them to stay away from the river, and police personnel remained on standby with ropes and stretchers.
"Everyone started saying 'run', so I ran. The siren in Bidur (town) also went off. I was very scared," Shanti Tamang, 40, told Reuters.
Rescue workers were also asked to move to safer places along with their equipment.
Make every effort to search for missing, Xi says
State broadcaster CCTV reported today that the risk of the lake bursting prompted all Chinese rescue personnel and vehicles to withdraw and stand by in a safe area.
Rescue operations were later resumed "as the risk posed by the upstream dammed lake was deemed manageable".
A Nepali Army officer said that the authorities stopped rescue operations for 90 minutes but resumed later.
Wednesday's flood ripped through villages and valleys, destroying power stations, roads, and bridges along a route linking Kathmandu with Lhasa in Tibet and popular with trekkers and pilgrims. Of those missing, at least 540 are foreigners, many of them Hindu pilgrims from India headed to the holy Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar in Tibet.
In Beijing, China's Politburo met today to direct rescue work.
State news agency Xinhua reported that the meeting, chaired by President Xi Jinping, said that the authorities must "scientifically formulate search-and-rescue plans, make every effort to search for missing people from China and abroad.
It added that rescue work faced "extremely difficult challenges" and called for stronger monitoring of glacier lakes, landslide risks and barrier lakes, emergency aid to affected areas in Nepal, and closer international disaster cooperation.
Earlier, Nepalese rescue teams used helicopters to search for survivors and drop emergency supplies to thousands cut off in towns and valleys, while emergency services — some using sniffer dogs — recovered dozens of bodies swept down into the plains.
Dibga Tamang was among the last people rescued from Rasuwa yesterday, airlifted along with three others to an army camp in Nuwakot.
"All of our people have gone; they are dead. I have no one left waiting for me. Everything and everyone is gone. The end," he said.
Nepal declines foreign rescue help
While offers of assistance are pouring in, Kathmandu stated that it does not need help from other nations in search and rescue missions.
"The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now, we do not require such help,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Lok Bahadur Chhetri today.
Meanwhile, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said that a rapid response team is already in Kathmandu but has not been deployed because the Nepali government has not yet planned to accept foreign rescue.
The Kathmandu Post reported that India, China, the United States (US), the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh had asked the government to allow their search-and-rescue teams to assist in the operation.
State media reports indicated that Chinese rescuers had yet to reach the worst-hit area on the Chinese side of the border, the Gyirong border crossing, by yesterday evening, as crews worked to clear debris from the key access road leading to the area.
Dramatic footage on Wednesday showed enormous torrents of muddy water and debris tearing through structures in the border crossing area within seconds and engulfing people trying to flee.
CCTV reported yesterday that the tally of missing in Tibet's Gyirong County was 558, including 260 foreign nationals. So far, just five people have been confirmed dead on the Chinese side.
Xinhua reported that China's Premier Li Qiang, the country's number two official, arrived at the disaster-stricken site in Gyirong yesterday afternoon. The visit suggested Beijing was treating the disaster as a top national priority.
Buildings 'wiped out like toothpicks'
Around the world, relatives of those missing were desperate for information about their whereabouts.
Sneha Sudhir was one of 10 women whose husbands had set out from Nepal on a trek to Tibet's Mount Kailash when disaster struck the region.
The men, all from northern Virginia, are among dozens of Americans missing.
"Where are they?" she said tearfully from her home in Chantilly, Virginia, on Thursday.
Sudhir added that the women are supporting each other and reaching out to officials, politicians and friends and family in the US and India, hoping for word.
"Everybody is taking turns in shedding their tears, wiping it off and getting back to work," she said.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said the US had offered support to Nepal.
"Nobody has ever seen anything quite like that, where very powerful, strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks. It is a terrible thing. We are sending aid, and we have spoken to the leadership, and we let them know that anything they want, they will have," he said.
