Nepal Flash Flood Washes Away About 40 Houses, Six Bridges in Gorkha; Up to 10 Missing

Around 4 am on Sunday, the Budhi Gandaki river in Nepal's Gorkha district jumped its banks. By daylight close to 40 houses and six bridges were gone and up to 10 people couldn't be found.

The water came down through Chumnubri Rural Municipality in the Manaslu region, roughly 100 km west of Kathmandu. Jagat, Salleri, Dobhan and Ghattekhola got the worst of it. Two hydropower projects were damaged. So was Bikas Basic School in Ghattekhola.

It depends who you ask.

Netra Prasad Sharma, Gorkha's assistant chief district officer, confirmed five people missing. Some Nepali outlets say four. The Times of India and myRepublica put it at 10, and the Times adds that five of those were last placed near the Ungilung river.

House counts wobble too. Gorkha's chief district officer, Dharmendra Kumar Mishra, first spoke of five to seven houses swept off the riverbed at Jagat. Later estimates from local authorities, relayed by the Kathmandu Post, said 35 to 40 across northern Gorkha. A few online clips seem to show the Soti Khola bridge collapsing. Nobody has verified them.

Roads are cut and phone signal in the upper valley is poor, so officials are mostly working from what villagers tell them.

Nepal's disaster authority, the NDRRMA, says it learned of the flood at 6:20 am and sent SMS warnings at 6:40. People upstream had been phoning down the valley for about an hour by then, the Kathmandu Post reported. One of them, a man named Sherap, said what he saw reminded him of the August 26 Bhotekoshi flood. He didn't wait for an official message.

October is peak season on the Manaslu circuit, and the trail was full.

Bhuvanraj Ojha, a conservation officer with the Manaslu Conservation Area Project, said more than 100 foreign tourists were stuck at Jagat, the entry point to the protected area. Ninety-eight had gone in on Saturday alone, and more reached Jagat after dark. Another 17 were waiting at Lokpa.

The Kathmandu Post has about 115 people at Jagat and 40 at Lokpa. The Times of India says over 150 foreigners in total. Guides and porters may account for some of the gap, though none of the reports say so outright.

Ojha says everyone is safe. Krishna Prasad Acharya, who heads the Gandaki chapter of the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal, said his group is working with the local government and security forces to bring out tourists, porters and guides together. Foreign nationals were flown out of Arughat by helicopter on Sunday.

The Nepali Army sent four helicopters. By its own count, quoted in the Kathmandu Post, 95 people had been moved to safer ground by the end of the day. Earlier tallies were lower: 36, then 47, then 49. The 36 broke down as six from Jagat, nine from Nyakphedi, nine from Yaru (an infant and a foreign national among them) and 12 from Paiyun.

Villagers along the river were told to head uphill. An alert also went out for the Trishuli and Narayani rivers further down.

Opposition parties wasted no time. The Nepali Congress urged the government to step up rescue work, and Rabi Lamichhane told his party members to help flood victims

It is not the first time this autumn that a Nepali river has turned on a settlement. The August 26 flood on the Bhotekoshi is still fresh enough that people in Gorkha used it as a reference point on Sunday morning. Indian outlets, including The Daily Jagran, reported that Salleri Bazaar was swept away and that Jagat Bazaar was badly hit, with mud and sludge pushing through the valley and more houses lost further downstream.

Local administrations kept repeating the same instruction through the day. Leave the riverbank. Go to higher ground. Don't wait to see how high it gets. Indian media also asked whether the surge could reach across the border, but the Nepali alerts so far have concerned the Trishuli and Narayani inside Nepal.

Still unconfirmed.

A landslide on Saturday may have blocked a tributary of the Budhi Gandaki. Water piled up behind it until it let go. An official from the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology pointed to that scenario when speaking to the Kathmandu Post, and residents suspect the Syar stream, which runs between Lokpa and Chumling, was the one that got plugged.

An official named Sapkota told the Kathmandu Post that the river had sliced through the road from Dobhan, and the routes around Jagat and Salleri were completely wrecked. Suspension bridges on the main Manaslu trail are gone. Northern Gorkha is now reachable mostly by air, which means supplies, medical help and any search of the debris all ride on helicopters, and weather up there usually closes in by afternoon.

Officials spent Sunday on rescue. On Monday they plan to look for alternative routes into the valley. They still don't know the full extent of the damage.