A major river in central Nepal has flooded, sweeping away houses and bridges and damaging part of a hydropower station, according to national authorities. The flood hit the Gorkha district on Sunday, as families were preparing for the first day of the Dashain festival, a major event in the Nepali calendar.
The army said about 50 people had been rescued from the bank of the Budhi Gandaki River. No casualties have been reported so far, but five people are still missing.
Damage to homes, bridges and a hydropower project
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said the flood swept away about a dozen houses and several suspension bridges. A hydroelectric project was also damaged, and some construction equipment was carried away by the water.
Officials said water levels at one location rose from two metres to nearly 8.5 metres within a couple of hours. Binod Parajuli, a meteorologist who works with the Nepalese government, said the hydrological station at the site had been swept away, so no data was coming from that location.
Video footage shows raging water rushing down a valley and washing away an entire building complex. Families have been forced to leave their homes and face uncertainty over where they will find safe shelter and essential supplies.
Possible causes and comparison with August floods
Experts said the latest debris flow was much smaller and moved more slowly than the deadly flash floods in August. The cause of this flood remains unclear.
Some people have said a landslide may have blocked the river or one of its tributaries for a period, before the trapped water burst out. Others said residents upstream saw an ice avalanche. The Budhi Gandaki is a tributary of the Trishuli river, downstream from another tributary where a glacier collapse caused the earlier disaster.
Aid response and families left in limbo
Save the Children is mobilising an emergency team to respond to Sunday’s flood. Tara Chettry, the charity’s director in Nepal, said: “Children’s lives have been ripped apart in an instant yet again.”
Chettry added that the full extent of the damage is not yet known, and that children in Gorkha may have lost homes, schools and communities. She said many of them would still be in shock after the August floods, which left them little time to recover.
Nepal is already on high alert and still recovering from the catastrophic floods that hit its border towns with Tibet two months ago. Those floods left more than 1,400 people dead and thousands missing. Many people swept away in the latest floods are not officially dead, which leaves their families in limbo.
