Flash Flood Washes Away Bridges in Nepal’s Gorkha District as Five Remain Missing

KATHMANDU, NEPAL

The river gave almost no warning. A landslide high in Gorkha district choked off the Budhi Gandaki overnight, and when the trapped water broke through on Sunday morning, it came down the valley as a wall of muddy sludge — tearing a bridge apart on camera, flattening homes, and forcing helicopter rescues across one of the Himalayas’ most rugged corridors.

By Sunday afternoon, the toll was still being counted. At least five people were out of contact — two women and three men who had been living in a shed on the banks of the Ungilung river in Chumchet, according to Nepal’s national disaster authority — and the army said 49 people, including one foreigner, had been pulled to safety. Later tallies put the total number rescued as high as 95, airlifted by five helicopters, including nine foreign nationals and six people lifted out of the landslide-prone village of Jagat.

The flood swept away about a dozen houses and two suspension bridges and damaged a hydroelectric project camp, carrying some of the construction equipment away, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said. It also washed away a highway bridge connecting Gorkha with the neighboring Dhading district, according to Dharam Raj Uprety, the authority’s chief. In the villages of Painyu and Bagar alone, nearly 35 houses were swept away or badly damaged, and settlements in Jagat, Salleri, Dovan and Ghattekhola were hit as the river surged toward its confluence with the Trishuli.

A dam of mud, then a burst

Officials say the flood began with a landslide in Chumnubri village in Gorkha district, about 100 kilometers west of Kathmandu, which blocked the Budhi Gandaki and let water pile up behind a natural dam. When the blockage gave way, the release was violent: within hours, water levels at one monitoring point reportedly rose from two meters to nearly 8.5 meters, overwhelming defenses and complicating access for first responders. A government hydrology station was itself swept away, disrupting data feeds just as the river peaked.

That speed is what made the morning so dangerous. Dramatic footage carried by Storyful and broadcast by WABC Eyewitness News captured the moment a bridge over the river — pounded by the surging water — gave way and was carried downstream. The New York Post’s video of the span collapsing became one of the day’s most-shared images of the disaster.

Assistant Chief District Officer Netra Prasad Sharma told the news agency ANI that the flood destroyed the motorable bridges at Arughat, Tripurasundari and Soti-Manbu, along with a Bailey bridge connecting wards of Dharche Rural Municipality, and footbridges linking Machhikhola with Karauja, Thadobharyang with Jagat, and Ghattekhola with Philim.

“Evacuate and remain safe”

As the water kept rising and falling, the warnings widened. National disaster authorities alerted people living along the river in the Gorkha, Tanahun, Chitwan, East Nawalparasi and West Nawalparasi districts.

“We have asked villages living along the river banks downstream to evacuate and remain safe.”— Dharmendra Kumar Mishra, Gorkha district’s most senior bureaucrat, per Reuters

Prime Minister Balen Shah said in a social media post that a Nepali Army contingent had been deployed by air and land for search and rescue, that helicopters had been mobilized to support relief and evacuation efforts, and that a Joint Rapid Response Team from Kathmandu had been airlifted to the region. Home Minister Sudan Gurung also warned of the severe flooding in a social media post on Sunday morning.

Humanitarian agencies moved quickly. Save the Children said it was deploying an emergency team, warning that many children were likely to be in shock as communities faced displacement once again — this time just as the Dashain festival was beginning. An early warning had already prompted evacuations in the market town of Arughat before the worst of the surge arrived.

Two months, two catastrophes

The flood is the second devastating natural disaster to strike Nepal in two months. On Aug. 26, an avalanche caused by a collapsing glacier sent a deadly flood roaring from the Himalayas near the Nepalese border with China, killing 1,457 people while thousands of others remained missing, according to Reuters.

We covered that August disaster as it unfolded — and Sunday’s flood follows the same brutal pattern: unstable Himalayan terrain, rivers fed by melting glaciers, and villages with minutes, not hours, to move. As of Sunday evening, authorities said it remained unclear how many remote hamlets were affected, and the river’s water level was still rising and falling as rescue crews worked the valley by air and by foot.

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