Rescue operations in Nepal’s flood-ravaged Himalayan region resumed on Friday, August 28, hours after being briefly suspended over fears that an overflowing lake on the Nepal-China border could trigger a second wave of devastation. Authorities in both countries determined the risks had eased, allowing search efforts in the Rasuwa region to continue.
Wednesday’s catastrophic flood, triggered by a glacier collapse in the Himalayas, has now claimed 547 lives in Nepal and five in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, with nearly 1,000 people still unaccounted for across the two countries, according to Reuters. The collapse unleashed a massive surge of rock, ice, mud and debris that tore through river systems in the mountains, and in the process gave rise to a new lake that continued swelling with runoff in the days that followed.
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By Friday, the lake had swollen past 2.5 million cubic meters — up sharply from the 1.5 to 2 million cubic meters measured just a day before — before spilling into the Lhende Khola river and onward into the Trishuli, according to local officials and eyewitnesses.
The sudden overflow set off alarm among Nepali authorities, pausing rescue work for roughly three hours. On the Chinese side, crews and equipment pulled back from the area as a precaution against a possible dam failure, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Once the danger was reassessed as under control, both countries resumed and intensified their search efforts.
CCTV reported that by midday, once the upstream lake was no longer seen as an imminent hazard, recovery work tied to the Gyirong mudslide was quickly restarted and scaled up.
Nepal Army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet told Reuters that the pause followed the flood warning, but subsequent checks showed the water level had risen by only about two feet — far less than initially feared.
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Wednesday’s flood tore through villages and river valleys along a corridor connecting Kathmandu with Lhasa, Tibet, wiping out power infrastructure, roads and bridges along a route heavily used by trekkers and religious travelers. Among those still missing, more than 540 are foreign nationals, a large share of them Indian pilgrims en route to the sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar.
The lake, formed in the immediate aftermath of the glacier collapse, had earlier been described by officials in both countries as a serious hazard requiring close monitoring. Separately, debris from Wednesday’s flood had raised concern over a possible blockage forming in Nepal’s Trishuli river. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) had been assessing whether that obstruction could act as a natural dam, holding back water before an abrupt release. Qianggong Zhang, ICIMOD’s head of climate and environmental risks, had noted that evacuation orders were issued for Jilong Port amid concern over a possible second surge.
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Nepal’s Ministry of Water Resources had earlier projected the lake could take on close to 3 million additional cubic meters of water within three days — roughly the equivalent of 1,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools — prompting Tibet to declare a Level 4 flood emergency on August 27.
With conditions now considered stable, the roughly 7,400 security personnel deployed to the disaster zone continue their work. Ground teams are searching riverbanks and downstream settlements, helicopters are airlifting residents out of isolated areas, and a separate Nepal Army unit remains stationed to monitor the Bhotekoshi River. 
