Nepal Puts Flood Death Toll at 1,243 as Officials Warn of Further Glacier Collapses

The death toll from the flash floods that struck the Nepal and China border region has risen to 1,243, The Hindu reported in its live coverage on Thursday, citing Nepali authorities. Nepal's prime minister, Shah, who succeeded Sushila Karki, has attributed the disaster to climate change. India delivered a fifth shipment of more than five tonnes of essential medicines along with an 11-member rescue team. Earlier counts had put deaths at about 1,050 in Nepal and 16 in the Tibet Autonomous Region, with several thousand people still listed as missing.

The event began on August 26, when a glacier collapsed and triggered a landslide that released a large volume of water down the Trishuli valley, destroying the Gyirong border checkpoint and striking settlements along a 72 kilometre stretch. Early assessments suspected a glacial lake outburst flood, in which a lake dammed by ice or debris breaks through. Later analysis by the United States Geological Survey found that the seismic signal followed the collapse rather than preceding it, meaning an earthquake did not trigger it.

A senior Chinese climate official told the South China Morning Post that glaciers across the Tibetan Plateau are likely to become more unstable, raising the probability of further collapses and secondary disasters. The plateau feeds the rivers on which roughly two billion people in South and East Asia depend for water, irrigation and hydroelectric power.

The damage is not only physical. In Pakistan, Dawn reports that flash flooding in Islamabad has been made worse by the Capital Development Authority's failure to enforce the city's master plan, with construction on drainage paths in a city designed to avoid exactly this. Across the region, the losses fall on public budgets and household balance sheets rather than on insurers, because these perils are largely uninsured.