USA Today, by Natalie Neysa Alund and Michael Loria: More than 150 people are dead and hundreds of people, including dozens of Americans, were missing on Aug. 26 after flash flooding in the Himalayan nation of Nepal, the country’s tourism board reported.
The flash flood took place at about 8:30 a.m. local time in the Bhote Koshi River in the country’s northern Rasuwa district near China’s Tibet border, authorities said.
Horrifying surveillance video circulating online shows people fleeing before the mudslide hits and a deluge crashes down on them. Drone footage also shows flooding devastation along the river as mud and waters engulf riverside communities.
So far, local police have reported 157 deaths connected to the disaster.
Initially, at least 384 travelers, including 291 foreign nationals, had been reported missing, the Nepal Tourism Board posted on social media.
“It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us. 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,” Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor who was being treated at a hospital, told Reuters. “Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She’s gone.”
Americans missing after flash flood in Nepal
Sunil Sharma, a Nepal tourism board spokesperson, told the Toronto Star the missing foreigners include 47 Americans, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 24 from Canada.
Officials said they were working to confirm the nationalities of hundreds of other tourists who remained missing as well as their “safety status.”
A State Department official said for U.S. citizens in the affected areas to follow instructions provided by local authorities and enroll in the department’s emergency updates program.
“We express our solidarity and are united in prayer for the Nepali people following the devastating floods,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on his official X page. The department “stands ready to support the Government of Nepal with needed humanitarian assistance.”
Many households in Rasuwa and Nuwakot are believed to have lost their homes or suffered significant damage, while damage to bridges and roads is also making it extremely difficult to reach some affected communities, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told USA TODAY in an email.
Nepal Red Cross teams were deploying to affected areas and have begun providing initial assistance, including water, shelter materials, blankets and first aid supplies, the agency said.
“The news of the loss of lives and property caused by the sudden flood in the Bhote Koshi River flowing through Rasuwa and Nuwakot has left me extremely saddened,” Nepal’s President Ram Chandra Paudell said in a statement on X. “I urge everyone to remain vigilant and actively engage in necessary coordination and cooperation in the lower coastal areas.”
Prophetic Link:
“It is on the law of God that the last great struggle of the controversy between Christ and His angels and Satan and his angels will come, and it will be decisive for all the world…. Men in responsible positions will not only ignore and despise the Sabbath themselves, but from the sacred desk will urge upon the people the observance of the first day of the week, pleading tradition and custom in behalf of this man-made institution. They will point to calamities on land and sea—to the storms of wind, the floods, the earthquakes, the destruction by fire—as judgments indicating God’s displeasure because Sunday is not sacredly observed. These calamities will increase more and more, one disaster will follow close upon the heels of another; and those who make void the law of God will point to the few who are keeping the Sabbath of the fourth commandment as the ones who are bringing wrath upon the world. This falsehood is Satan’s device that he may ensnare the unwary.” The Southern Watchman, June 28, 1904 and Christian Service, 155.2
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