{"id":5256,"date":"2026-08-28T11:55:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T11:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/?p=5256"},"modified":"2026-08-28T11:55:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T11:55:28","slug":"lake-overflows-on-nepal-china-border-sparking-panic-and-halting-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/?p=5256","title":{"rendered":"Lake overflows on Nepal-China border, sparking panic and halting rescue"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lake formed by a landslide on the\u00a0Nepal-China border started to overflow on Friday,\u00a0triggering panic and\u00a0putting at risk areas devastated by a\u00a0flash flood<\/a>\u00a0two days ago\u00a0as rescue efforts were briefly halted.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s catastrophic flood caused by a glacier collapse\u00a0killed 489 people in\u00a0Nepal\u00a0and five in China’s Tibet, with almost 1,000 more missing in the two countries.<\/p>\n

A huge torrent of rock, ice, mud and debris cascaded through Himalayan\u00a0mountain river systems after the collapse, and also led to the formation of a lake where water continued to collect and rise.<\/p>\n

On Friday,\u00a0the lake’s reservoir had topped 2.5 million cubic metres of water, up from the estimated 1.5-2 million cubic metres recorded a day earlier,\u00a0before overflowing into the Bhotekoshi River, authorities and witnesses in\u00a0Nepal\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have received a notice saying that the lake has broken its banks,” Narendra Pariyar, the most senior bureaucrat\u00a0in\u00a0Nepal’s flood-hit Rasuwa district, told\u00a0Reuters<\/em>. “But we do not know how big it is and how high is its water level. We can see that the level of water in the river is rising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read:\u00a0<\/strong>Rain disrupts train operations<\/a><\/p>\n

People ran to higher ground carrying belongings as announcements were made warning them to stay away from the river and police personnel remained on standby with ropes and stretchers,\u00a0Reuters\u00a0<\/em>witnesses said.<\/p>\n

“Everyone started saying ‘run’, so I ran. The siren in Bidur (town) also went off. I was very scared,” Shanti Tamang, 40, told\u00a0Reuters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rescue workers were also asked to move to safer places along with their equipment.<\/p>\n

Make every effort to search for missing, Xi says<\/strong><\/p>\n

The risk of the lake bursting prompted all Chinese rescue personnel and vehicles to withdraw and stand by in a safe area, state broadcaster\u00a0CCTV\u00a0<\/em>said on Friday. Rescue operations were later resumed “as the risk posed by the upstream dammed lake was deemed manageable”, it said.<\/p>\n

Authorities in\u00a0Nepal\u00a0stopped rescue operations for 90 minutes but resumed later, an army officer said.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s\u00a0flood ripped through villages and valleys, destroying power stations, roads and bridges along a route that links Kathmandu with Lhasa in Tibet and is popular with trekkers and pilgrims. Of those missing, at least 540 are\u00a0foreigners<\/a>, many of them Hindu pilgrims from India headed to the holy Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar in Tibet.<\/p>\n

In Beijing, China’s Politburo met on Friday to direct rescue work, state media reported. Authorities must “scientifically formulate search-and-rescue plans, make every effort to search for missing people from China and abroad,” the meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping said, according to state news agency\u00a0Xinhua<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The meeting said 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\u00a0Nepal, and closer international disaster cooperation.<\/p>\n

Earlier,\u00a0Nepalese rescue teams used helicopters to search for survivors and drop emergency supplies to thousands cut off in towns and valleys, while emergency services \u2013 some using sniffer dogs \u2013 recovered dozens of bodies swept down into the plains.<\/p>\n

Dibga Tamang was among the last people rescued from Rasuwa on Thursday, airlifted along with three others to an army camp in Nuwakot. “All of our people have gone. They are dead,” Tamang said. “I have no one left waiting for me. Everything and everyone is gone. The end.”<\/p>\n

Nepal declines foreign rescue help<\/strong><\/p>\n

While offers of assistance\u00a0are pouring in,\u00a0Nepal\u00a0said it does not need help\u00a0from other nations in search and rescue missions.<\/p>\n

“The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don\u2019t require such help,\u201d Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the foreign ministry said on Friday.<\/p>\n

A South Korean rapid response team is already in Kathmandu but has not been deployed because the\u00a0Nepali government does not have a plan to accept foreign rescue yet, according to the foreign ministry in Seoul.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kathmandu Post<\/em>\u00a0reported that India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had asked the government to allow their search-and-rescue teams to assist in the operation.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0<\/strong>Landslides kill 15 in Philippines<\/a><\/p>\n

Chinese rescuers had yet to reach the worst-hit area on the Chinese side of the border, the Gyirong border crossing, by Thursday evening, state media reports indicated, as crews worked to clear debris from the key access road leading to the area.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The tally of missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County was 558, Chinese state broadcaster\u00a0CCTV\u00a0<\/em>said on Thursday, including 260 foreign nationals. So far, just five people have been confirmed dead on the Chinese side.<\/p>\n

China’s Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No 2 official, arrived at the disaster-stricken site in Gyirong on Thursday afternoon, state-run\u00a0Xinhua\u00a0<\/em>news agency said. The visit suggested Beijing was treating the disaster as a matter of the highest national priority.<\/p>\n

Buildings ‘wiped out like toothpicks’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Around the world, relatives of those missing were desperate for information\u00a0about their whereabouts.<\/p>\n

Sneha Sudhir was one of 10 women whose husbands had set out from\u00a0Nepal\u00a0on a trek to Tibet’s Mount Kailash when the region was struck by disaster.<\/p>\n

The men, all from northern Virginia, are among dozens of Americans missing. “Where are they?” Sudhir said tearfully from her home in Chantilly, Virginia, on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Sudhir said the women were supporting each other and reaching out to officials, politicians and friends and family in the US\u00a0and India, hoping for word. “Everybody is taking turns in shedding their tears, wiping it off and getting back to work,” she said.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump said the US\u00a0had offered support to\u00a0Nepal. “Nobody’s ever seen anything quite like that, where very powerful, strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks. It’s a terrible thing. We are sending aid and we’ve spoken to the leadership and we let them know anything they want, they’ll have.”<\/p>\n

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A lake formed by a landslide on the\u00a0Nepal-China border started to overflow on Friday,\u00a0triggering panic and\u00a0putting at risk areas devastated by a\u00a0flash flood\u00a0two days ago\u00a0as rescue efforts were briefly halted. Wednesday’s catastrophic flood caused by a glacier collapse\u00a0killed 489 people in\u00a0Nepal\u00a0and five in China’s Tibet, with almost 1,000 more missing in the two countries. A …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5258,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions\/5258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}