Nepal floods have swept away homes and suspension bridges in the central Gorkha district, damaged a hydropower project and forced families to flee as authorities search for five missing people.
Around 50 people were rescued from areas along the banks of the Budhi Gandaki River, the Nepalese army confirmed. No deaths had been reported at the time of the announcement, but the five missing people raised concerns about the scale of the damage.
Video footage of the flooding shows powerful water rushing down a valley and sweeping away an entire building complex. The force of the water also carried away construction equipment and damaged infrastructure along the river.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said about a dozen houses and several suspension bridges had been swept away. A hydropower project in the affected area also sustained damage.
The river rose rapidly during the incident. Officials said water levels at one monitoring location climbed from around two metres (6ft 7in) to nearly 8.5 metres (27ft 11in) within a couple of hours.
Binod Parajuli, a meteorologist working with the Nepalese government, said the flooding had also destroyed a monitoring station, leaving officials without data from that location.
“Our hydrological station was swept away and we are not getting any data from that location,” Parajuli said.
The cause of the sudden surge remains uncertain. One possibility is that a landslide temporarily blocked the river or one of its tributaries, allowing water to build up before breaking through the obstruction. Other accounts from people upstream suggested an ice avalanche may have occurred.
Experts said the debris flow appeared smaller and moved more slowly than the devastating flash floods that struck the region in August. However, the latest flooding has again raised concerns about the vulnerability of communities living near Nepal’s rivers and steep mountain valleys.
The disaster comes as Nepal continues to recover from catastrophic flooding that struck border towns near Tibet two months earlier, leaving more than 1,400 people dead and thousands missing, according to the original report.
Sunday’s flood hit Gorkha as families and communities prepared to celebrate the first day of Dashain, one of Nepal’s major annual festivals. The timing has added to the disruption, with residents forced to leave their homes while facing uncertainty over where to find shelter, food and other essential supplies.
Save the Children said it was mobilising an emergency response team to assist people affected by the flooding. The organisation warned that children could be particularly vulnerable after experiencing repeated disasters within a short period.
“Children’s lives have been ripped apart in an instant yet again,” said Tara Chettry, the charity’s director in Nepal.
She said the full extent of the damage was not yet known, but children may have lost their homes, schools and communities. Many were also likely to be struggling with the effects of the August floods, leaving them with little time to recover before another emergency.
The Budhi Gandaki is a tributary of the Trishuli River. Farther downstream, another tributary was associated with the earlier disaster, which followed a glacier collapse. The relationship between the latest flooding and the previous event remains unclear, and authorities have yet to establish what triggered Sunday’s sudden rise in water levels.
With five people still missing and monitoring equipment destroyed, emergency teams face the challenge of assessing the damage and locating those who have not been accounted for. For displaced families in Gorkha, the immediate priority is finding safety and securing essential supplies while officials work to determine the cause and full impact of the flood.
