Nepal Flood Death Toll Passes 750 as New Flood Warning Halts Search Along Bhotekoshi River

Since the Bhotekoski flash flood tore through the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday, August 26, the death toll has kept climbing every day. As of Sunday, Nepal's disaster agency put the confirmed dead at 734, with Chinese authorities in Tibet reporting 16 more, for a combined total of about 750, according to CBS News. Nearly 3,050 people remain unaccounted for, split between 2,498 missing in Nepal and 546 in China.

The scale of the disaster traces to a suspected glacier collapse or ice avalanche upstream near Kodari that dammed a river valley and then burst, sending a wall of water, mud, ice and boulders down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli systems, according to NPR and Wikipedia's tracking page on the event. The exact cause remains under investigation.

A 97-year-old survivor becomes the face of the search

Guna Maya Bohara was buried for four days beneath the wreckage of her care home before rescuers pulled her out in a four-hour operation, according to the Times of India. Images of her, caked in mud, being lifted to safety in the scoop of a digger have become one of the defining pictures of the disaster. Her great-nephew, Dipak, told BBC Nepali she looked like "a warrior" who had returned victorious from battle. Doctors say she is recovering in hospital.

Bohara's survival is the exception, not the rule, in a disaster where more than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far but thousands are still unaccounted for, per CBS News.

Tunnel rescues grind on at hydropower sites

Nepal's government believes more than 100 workers may still be trapped alive inside tunnels at the Trishuli 3A and 3B hydropower projects, Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha said, according to CBS News. Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet said rescuers have struggled against 4 to 5 feet of mud and limited helicopter landing sites, using ropes and baskets to reach some survivors. On Saturday, rescue teams broke through the mud blockage at Trishuli 3A and began pumping air into the tunnel while excavation continued.

Separately, in Rasuwa, the Nepali Army deployed a specialized team to a different hydropower tunnel and pulled two workers out alive on Friday, August 28, according to ANI News, which reported the army was still working to determine how many people remained trapped. CNN released army footage from that operation showing survivors crawling through thick mud toward rescuers.

A new flood warning halts riverside operations

Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority issued a fresh alert Sunday morning, warning that flow in the Bhotekoshi River in Rasuwa had increased again, according to an alert obtained by Agence France-Presse and reported by CBS News. The agency told rescue personnel, riverside residents and everyone in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading and Chitwan districts to exercise caution. Previous warnings had already forced evacuations from the Trishuli area earlier in the week after a burst dam on the Tibet side, according to ANI News.

Poor weather has repeatedly grounded the helicopters that make up the backbone of the rescue effort. A Nepali Army official told CBS News the fleet can manage roughly 500 trips a day into the disaster zone when weather cooperates, each flight carrying only a handful of survivors or supply loads of noodles, rice and clothing.

International stakes and a fair question about foreign help

The U.S. State Department said Saturday it is providing more than $3.6 million in humanitarian aid, including three months of emergency food assistance meant to cover up to 10,000 households, according to CBS News. NPR reported that among roughly 3,000 missing people region-wide, more than half are foreign nationals, and the State Department has said 90 Americans remain missing after five were rescued. Many were Hindu pilgrims traveling to Mt. Kailash in Tibet, including the in-laws of Queens resident Ariadna Riley, who told NPR her family has been "tirelessly looking" for her mother- and father-in-law since Wednesday.

Kathmandu has been selective about accepting outside rescue teams, given the number of foreign missing and the technical demands of tunnel and mudslide rescues. Nepali officials have not laid out a detailed public rationale in these reports beyond coordination concerns on difficult terrain, and the government has accepted specialized help, including Indian technical teams working the hydropower tunnels. Whether broader international rescue capacity could have reached more of the roughly 3,044 still missing is not something these reports resolve.

Property damage in Nepal alone had already topped रु200 billion, or roughly $1.3 billion, as of a count taken August 27, according to figures compiled on Wikipedia's tracking page, a number certain to rise as flood warnings continue and the full scope of destruction in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts becomes clear.