Nepal/Tibet Landslides: Over 1,000 Missing, Entire Villages Buried as Rescuers Fear More Flooding
Rescuers in Nepal and occupied Tibet estimated on Thursday that over 1,000 people remain missing, including nationals from dozens of countries, after heavy rains caused massive landslides and rapidly rising floods to consume entire towns of people.
Authorities warned that rain is expected to persist this week, creating the potential for more devastation in areas already severely affected, whether buried in mud or completely isolated from sources of food and medicine as the landslides tore through major roads and bridges. Tibet’s colonial overlord, the Chinese Communist Party, is reportedly monitoring rapidly rising waters in a lake in the region that could soon overflow and cause even more devastation, potentially harming search and rescue teams working as rapidly as possible to find survivors in the mud.
Dramatic footage surfaced on Wednesday from the region showing people fleeing massive rushes of mud and water. The landslides appeared to consume entire neighborhoods and make bridges and roads instantly disappear. Many of the affected areas were heavily populated by travelers from all over the world participating in Hindu pilgrimages in the region.
In Nepal, authorities placed the death toll at 359 as of Thursday morning local time and estimated that over 1,000 people remained missing. Reports differed on whether the missing ranged between 1,300 and 1,400 people, and most suggested that number would rapidly rise as rescue teams made contact with now-isolated villages and towns. The Chinese Communist Party placed the death toll in Tibet at press time at just three people.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which observes weather and seismic patterns around the world, attributed the landslides to a glacial collapse related to the heavy rainfall, which then pushed icy mud down the steep Himalayan terrain into populated areas. The USGS noted that it had documented what appeared to be a 4.4 magnitude earthquake, but later revised that observation, indicating that the “earthquake” was the result of the vast amounts of moving icy mud, rather than the earthquake causing the landslides. (Read more from “Nepal/Tibet Landslides: Over 1,000 Missing, Entire Villages Buried as Rescuers Fear More Flooding” HERE)
