Sixty-five Americans are missing after a wall of water razed entire towns to the ground in the Himalayas, officials say.
More than 800 people are unaccounted for in Nepal, and 500 in China after a torrent of mud and water surged through a valley on the border, thought to have been caused by glacial collapse in the world’s highest mountain range.
The total death toll is not known as authorities, governments and tour groups scramble to establish who was in the area at the time, although the Guardian reports some local authorities put it north of 1,000.
At least 270 bodies have already been recovered from the scene, which covers the Trishuli, Lhende Khola, and Bhote Koshi rivers in and around the Rasuwa district, according to Nepal police.
Nepal Tourism Board spokesperson Sunil Sharma told the BBC that 655 tourists were unaccounted for, including 65 Americans, 127 Nepalis, 53 Ukrainians, 51 Malaysians, 35 Australians, and 33 Brits.
“We are coordinating with the relevant authorities for their search and rescue,” he said.
The U.S. Embassy in Nepal offered its “heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the devastating floods,” adding that it is “working to account for U.S. citizens who may have been affected.”
In Gyirong County in the autonomous Chinese region of Tibet, 558 people are missing, according to Chinese authorities.
The U.S. Geological Survey believes that a massive sheet of glacier peeled off in Langtang National Park, a little under 40 miles from the Nepali capital of Kathmandu, triggering a 5.2 magnitude earthquake.
Speaking to Reuters, health worker Tula Bahadur BK said that “There is devastation everywhere we look. The settlements next to the river have been completely swept away. Five of my own relatives are missing.”
Gut-wrenching images and videos have already circulated widely, including footage from the Gyirong border crossing between Nepal and Tibet that shows a huge border structure submerged by a wall of water in the blink of an eye.
“The road is completely swept away because of the flash flooding,” the owner of a tour company who had three of the missing Americans on his tour told CNN’s Out Front. “There is no land access. Only aerial things can be done. It’s devastating right now. It’s very unbelievable, very hard to believe. We never expected something like this before.
Among the areas hit by the flooding is the popular Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage route, which is important to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and followers of Bon.
The spiritual group the Isha Foundation says it has lost contact with 77 people traveling the route, the BBC reports.
Already, astonishing tales are emerging, including that of tour guide Mu, who told Zhejiang-based Tide News that a last-minute decision saved his group’s lives.
“It rained all night [on Tuesday], and I was worried we wouldn’t be able to see the snow-capped mountains,” they said. “So I decided to lead them up first to a viewpoint in another area.”
While up at the new location, they heard a “loud rumbling sound. No one could have imagined it was a mudslide.”
They had applied for permits to cross into Nepal, but “our permits never came through.”
“It’s only then that we caught up with the news and realized what had happened.”
“It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us,” 68-year-old survivor Keshav Prasad Baral told the Guardian from hospital. “As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher. When I saw it enter our home, I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud.
“Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She’s gone.”
In a social media post Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that the U.S. “stands ready to support the government of Nepal with needed humanitarian assistance.”
The State Department has not confirmed the total number of missing Americans. The Daily Beast has contacted it and the Nepal Tourism Board for more information.
