Flood between Nepal and Tibet: 362 bodies recovered, over 1,400 people missing

Rescuers working along the border between Nepal and China have recovered at least 362 bodies following the water and mud flow that struck the area on August 26: 359 on the Nepalese side and 3 in Tibet. Search operations concern over 1,400 people who remain unaccounted for. Nepalese police reported that 4,050 officers have been mobilized for rescue and recovery operations, according to ANSA.

At the origin of the wave, according to the reconstructions available, is the collapse of a glacier that poured into the Lhende Khola river. Teams are working in the Nepalese districts of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading and Gorkha, with security forces, local authorities and mountain guides, as reported by Sky TG24.

Two tallies that do not add up

The most delicate point of this affair is not the number itself, but the way the numbers are constructed. On one side there are the figures released by Nepalese authorities; on the other, those from Chinese state media, which indicate 558 missing — 260 of them foreigners — in Gyirong county, Tibet, where three deaths have been recorded. The very authorities and media reporting these figures warn that the two tolls cannot automatically be added together: the areas border one another, but the registration criteria do not.

The Nepal Tourism Board indicated 517 foreign tourists and 127 Nepalese citizens among the missing. The published lists include, by nationality:

Origin	People on the lists
India	178
China	100
United States	65
Ukraine	53
Malaysia	51
Australia	35
United Kingdom	33
Canada	25

These are lists of people to be traced, not confirmed victims: the distinction is the one separating a record of presence from a death toll. In a valley crossed this season by groups of hikers and seasonal workers, the gap between the two categories can remain open for days.

The Nepalese and Chinese tolls cannot automatically be added together.

The geographic perimeter

The event struck a Nepalese region and a Tibetan county together, meaning two different administrative and information systems. The practical consequence is that data arrives through separate timelines and channels: Nepalese police report the number of bodies recovered and the officers deployed, while Chinese state media report the count of missing persons in Gyirong county. Neither source currently provides an overall picture of the affected area.

On the reaction front, the Dalai Lama issued a message in which he said he was “deeply saddened by the devastating floods”, referring to the Rasuwa region in Nepal and Kyirong in Tibet, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano.

What we don’t know

It is not known how many of the more than 1,400 missing people have been found alive and how many remain to be searched for: the published lists do not distinguish between the two conditions. It is not known how many of the 517 foreigners indicated by the Nepal Tourism Board have been traced since the list was published. The total number of destroyed buildings is not known, nor is the number of people evacuated. No consolidated figure combining both sides of the border has been released, and at present no authority exists to publish one.

Nor is the sequence of events settled: the account of the glacial collapse is the one relayed by local sources, without any independent technical verification having been made public regarding the volume of water released or the conditions of the upstream basin. One figure that is particularly conspicuously missing is the time elapsed between the collapse and the wave’s arrival at the villages: this is the measure that would show whether a warning system could have worked.

Operations continue in the four Nepalese districts indicated by police. The count of bodies recovered — 359 in Nepal and 3 in Tibet — is the one reported by the cited sources, which do not indicate an update time, and remains the only figure on which the authorities of the two countries converge in form, if not in total.

Sources: ANSA; Sky TG24; Il Fatto Quotidiano; Il Sole 24 Ore, English edition. Data on the Tibetan side comes from Chinese state media, as relayed by the cited sources.