26 Aug Nepal Emergency: floods in Rasuwa
Nepal, Rasuwa: the district where we work has been hit by a catastrophic flood.
Last updated: 27 August 2026, 5 :43 p.m. CEST
Nepal Police report 359 confirmed dead, and the toll continues to rise. In Nepal 826 people are missing and 73 injured; on the Tibetan side the Chinese authorities report three dead and 558 missing. Across the two countries, more than 1,300 remain unaccounted for. “Missing” means not yet traced: in an area with no roads and no communications, many are simply unreachable.
Those missing in Nepal include 579 travellers (466 foreign nationals from around thirty countries), 161 Rasuwa residents and 85 army and police personnel involved in the rescue.
What happened. On Wednesday 26 August, at around 8:40, a large section of glacier broke away in Tibet above the Lhende river and dammed it. When that dam of ice and debris gave way, the water behind it came down the Bhote Koshi and then the Trishuli in a single wave; the Trishuli rose nine metres in thirty minutes. By 9 o’clock the flood had struck Timure and Syabrubesi.
There was no earthquake. Early accounts described a magnitude 4.4 tremor. The United States Geological Survey has corrected this: no earthquake occurred. The signal recorded was the glacial collapse itself, reclassified at magnitude 5.2. Geomorphologist Daniel Shugar (University of Calgary) points to meltwater lubricating the base of the glacier until it failed. It had not been raining.
The damage. Bodies have been recovered across eight districts, only two of them in Rasuwa. At Timure the market, the customs yard and the public offices are gone; the settlement of Khalte was destroyed; Syabrubesi lies buried in mud. Around 40 kilometres of road and at least 19 bridges have been lost, including the one rebuilt after the 2025 flood. Hydropower plants are out of service. The villages upstream cannot be reached by road, and the emergency supplies prepositioned in the area were destroyed.
The rescue. Thirteen helicopters are engaged in the search; the army rescued more than a hundred people on Thursday morning alone; 42 doctors have been assigned to five hospitals, where treatment is free. Bad weather keeps halting flights. The Government has declared the affected authorities disaster crisis zones for three months and released 25 million rupees.
Not the first time. On 8 July 2025 the same valley was hit by a comparable event. Until a few years ago the Hindu Kush Himalaya saw one glacial flood every five to ten years; between May and June 2025 alone, ICIMOD recorded three in two months.
ASIA in Rasuwa. We have worked here since 2015, the year of the earthquake. Our team is on the ground assessing needs and organising a first response with our local partners. What is needed: shelter, safe water, food, and medical care in the villages no vehicle can reach.
Your donation helps us bring immediate support to the communities that have been hit.
Last updated: 26 August 2026, 5 a.m. CEST
On the morning of 26 August, a sudden transboundary flood entered Nepal from the Tibetan side through the Lhende-Bhote Koshi-Trishuli river system, sweeping through settlements and critical infrastructure in Rasuwa and downstream districts. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, drawing on satellite imagery analysis, attributes the event to a glacier-related flood in the Lhende river triggered by a snow and rock landslide that blocked the channel upstream; the precise chain of events is still under investigation. As of 05:00 on 27 August, Nepal Police reported 162 deaths and 41 people receiving treatment, while hundreds remained missing or out of contact. Destroyed roads and bridges, unstable communications and isolated communities continue to impede rescue and assessment efforts. The Government has declared the affected areas disaster crisis zones and announced free treatment for the injured.
Confirmed severe impact across Rasuwa
The damage runs the length of the district and continues downstream. The settlements of Timure and Syabrubesi in Gosaikunda were among the first hit, road access towards the northern border has been severed, and communities downstream along the Trishuli in Nuwakot and Dhading have also been affected. The Government has named Uttargaya among the most affected local governments, and it is the area we know most about so far: the old and new municipal office buildings were washed away, multiple connecting bridges were lost, the Khalte settlement was completely swept away and pre-positioned emergency supplies were destroyed. Independent reporting indicates that the market areas of Betrawati and Sole were also swept away. The Nepal Electricity Authority reports damage to infrastructure linked to eleven hydropower projects with a combined capacity of 405 MW, and telecommunications towers in Rasuwa and Nuwakot have been damaged, further limiting contact with affected communities. We still have no verified household figures for any of the affected municipalities. Immediate priorities include emergency shelter, safe water and WASH, food and essential items, health and protection support, and restoring access to cut-off communities.
Asia’s Response
All ASIA staff are safe and accounted for. The team is collecting and verifying data on affected people, displacement, damage, access and priority needs. Eleven years in Rasuwa have meant working across the district, not in a single municipality. Uttargaya, where our programmes are based, is also where access opened first, so that is where the team began. Gosaikunda and Aamachhodingmo are among the worst affected. We delivered shelter assistance in Syabrubesi, in Gosaikunda, after the 2015 earthquake, we have carried out assessments in that part of the district since, and we deal with the same local authorities and district structures, so we can move there as soon as conditions allow. Rapid assessments in both are already planned. We are working in coordination with the district authorities and the local governments concerned, and alongside the other agencies responding. We aim to consolidate the findings and share an evidence-based proposal with partners by Monday 31 August.
When flood waters rise, we rise up as a community. No one stays afloat alone.
Your donation helps us bring immediate support to the communities that have been hit.
Your donation helps us bring immediate support to the communities that have been hit.
Last updated: 26 August 2026, 3 p.m. CEST
On the morning of 26 August a sudden surge of water came down the Bhotekoshi river from Tibet and tore through the district of Rasuwa, in Nepal. ASIA has been working here for many years, and we are in contact with our local partners to work out how to respond.
At around 9 in the morning the wave hit Timure, on the border with China, and Syabrubesi, the gateway to the Langtang valley, before flowing into the Trishuli and moving on towards Nuwakot and Dhading.
A dozen settlements have been hit. Forty-two kilometres of road between Betrawati and the border have been destroyed, along with several concrete bridges — including the one rebuilt after last year’s flood. The homes, shops and public offices of the Timure market have been swept away. Several hydropower plants are out of service and the electricity supply is down.
There is still no official toll. Nepal Police have recovered seven bodies between Nuwakot and Dhading, and dozens of people are missing, among them a number of officers who were carrying out the rescue. As always in the first hours of an emergency, the figures are likely to rise.
What we know about the cause
Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology has ruled out local rainfall as an explanation for the surge. The exact cause has not yet been established: the leading hypothesis is the bursting of a glacial lake upstream, in Tibetan territory. It would be the second such event in little more than a year — the flood of July 2025, which struck the same area, was confirmed as the outburst of a supraglacial lake.
Why we need to act now
This has hit communities that were already fragile. Rasuwa is a mountain district with few roads and few services. With forty-two kilometres of road gone, the villages upstream are cut off: reaching a hospital, a school or a market becomes a matter of days, not hours. And the monsoon is not over. Families without a home, and whole villages with no access to healthcare, schooling or basic supplies.
Our staff have travelled to the area and we are organising the first relief efforts.
We will update this page as news comes in from the field.
When flood waters rise, we rise up as a community. No one stays afloat alone.
Your donation helps us bring immediate support to the communities that have been hit.