Scientists say better early-warning system could have saved lives, as rescue efforts for the 4,500 still missing continue

Nepal last week turned down foreign ​involvement in general search and rescue but said it needed specialised services and advanced technological support in areas such as life-detecting machines, large refrigerators and pre-fabricated bridges.

Aid worth more than $42m has poured into the country and Nepal is now working with experts from other countries to help with rescue operations.

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© Composite: Handout / 2026 Planet Labs PBC / AFP via Getty Images

© Composite: Handout / 2026 Planet Labs PBC / AFP via Getty Images

© Composite: Handout / 2026 Planet Labs PBC / AFP via Getty Images

In Alaska, the Himalayas, the Andes, Greenland, and perhaps also the Alps, deadly chain reactions are just waiting to be triggered

You may not have felt it, but the earth beneath our feet is getting twitchier, and global heating is to blame. As temperatures surge and climate breakdown accelerates, interactions between climate and geology are becoming ever more apparent – as marked by last week’s horrific events in Nepal and Tibet. We still have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the idea that a changing climate can impact what scientists call the geosphere, but the evidence has long been incontestable.

In 2021, a similar deluge ripped through a series of mountain valleys in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, severely damaging two hydroelectric power plants and taking about 200 lives. In August 2025, a colossal landslide in an Alaskan fjord created a 500-metre-high wave in an area frequented by cruise ships. A few months earlier, the collapse of part of a glacier in Switzerland’s Valais canton caused a debris-laden torrent that destroyed and buried most of the already evacuated village of Blatten.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL. His latest book is The Fate of the World – a History and Future of the Climate Crisis

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© Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

Search and rescue teams have recovered two bodies following this weekend's flash floods in the Grand Canyon. The National Park Service says more than a dozen other people remain missing. Lodges and hotels are closed inside the park and more rain and flooding are possible. Ali Rogin reports.

For those stranded by a flood, disaster experts say survival depends on access to oxygen, food and water.

School principal Rajendra Dawadi's quick decision to evacuate his school saved at least 900 students from devastating flash floods in Nepal last week.

Majority of missing Australians were near Gyirong Port minutes before impact. Rescuers say the area is now destroyed, covered in metres of silt and debris

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It has been almost a week since the catastrophic floods in Nepal and not even a vehicle can get into the area where the majority of missing Australians were last heard from.

Gyirong Port, the border area between Nepal and China, was the first to be hit. Images from Chinese rescue teams who have managed to get in by helicopter or hiking show the area has been completely flattened. The immigration building, the power lines, everything, just wiped away.

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© Photograph: Lhasa fire and rescue mobile detachment/Xinhua/AP

© Photograph: Lhasa fire and rescue mobile detachment/Xinhua/AP

© Photograph: Lhasa fire and rescue mobile detachment/Xinhua/AP

The storm has intensified quickly since becoming a hurricane Sunday and has been fueled by warm waters far offshore, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Workers thought to be stuck in underground areas at 11 sites after last week’s devastating flash floods

Rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, hundreds of whom are feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of 12 hydropower projects in Nepal after the devastating flash floods, ​the ⁠country’s disaster ​management authority has said.

The death toll from the ⁠unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud ​and debris on Wednesday last week has risen to 939 people, with 16 more dead reported in Tibet. More than 4,400 are missing on the two sides of the border.

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© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images

At least two bodies have been recovered since a major flash flood swept through the Grand Canyon.

Rights group claims 300 homes were destroyed in Tibet and number of missing people is ‘far higher’ than Beijing admits

A Tibetan advocacy group says hundreds of homes were destroyed on the Tibetan side of the border in last week’s deadly floods, raising questions about Beijing’s official account of the scale of the disaster.

Public discussion about the flash floods has been restricted, with security officials in Tibet announcing on Sunday that it had penalised at least 10 people for sharing “false disaster information”. There was no further information on the nature of the penalties.

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© Photograph: Jigme Dorje/Xinhua/AP

© Photograph: Jigme Dorje/Xinhua/AP

© Photograph: Jigme Dorje/Xinhua/AP

Workers thought to be stuck in underground areas at 11 sites after last week’s devastating flash floods

Rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, hundreds of whom are feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of 12 hydropower projects in Nepal after the devastating flash floods, ​the ⁠country’s disaster ​management authority has said.

The death toll from the ⁠unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud ​and debris on Wednesday last week has risen to 939 people, with 16 more dead reported in Tibet. More than 4,400 are missing on the two sides of the border.

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© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images

Rajendra Dawadi ordered students to higher ground with moments to spare after receiving warnings from upstream

A headteacher in Nepal evacuated 900 children from a school moments before a deadly wall of water struck their town amid the devastating flash floods that have killed almost 800 people and left thousands missing.

Rajendra Dawadi decided to halt classes and order children to higher ground after receiving warnings about the scale of the flooding heading their way.

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© Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

© Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

© Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

Rajendra Dawadi ordered students to higher ground with moments to spare after receiving warnings from upstream

A headteacher in Nepal evacuated 900 children from a school moments before a deadly wall of water struck their town amid the devastating flash floods that have killed almost 800 people and left thousands missing.

Rajendra Dawadi decided to halt classes and order children to higher ground after receiving warnings about the scale of the flooding heading their way.

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© Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

© Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

© Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

Corporate regulator finds insurers settling most claims with cash rather than by managing repairs or rebuilding, warning of ‘unfair outcomes’ for homeowners

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Home insurers are overwhelmingly paying cash to settle claims, leaving Australians to foot blowouts in repair costs for their cyclone-damaged homes.

The corporate regulator is calling for “realistic” bigger payouts, warning the practice could cause “unfair outcomes” for people already in vulnerable positions.

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© Photograph: Brian Cassey/AAP

© Photograph: Brian Cassey/AAP

© Photograph: Brian Cassey/AAP

Total of 804 confirmed dead and more than 3,000 missing amid threat of fresh inundation

• ‘Their whole village has disappeared’: frantic hunt for survivors in Kathmandu hospital

Rescuers in Nepal and Tibet have battled through leg-sucking mud amid the threat of fresh flooding to search for thousands of people still missing after a deadly wall of water swept through the Himalayan border zone, engulfing entire villages.

The latest updates on Sunday put the number of missing at 3,048, including hundreds of foreigners. There was a total of 804 confirmed deaths across Nepal and Tibet, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India.

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© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

Total of confirmed 797 dead and more than 3,000 missing amid threat of fresh inundation

• Nepal-Tibet flash flood – latest updates

• ‘Their whole village has disappeared’: frantic hunt for survivors in Kathmandu hospital

Rescuers in Nepal and Tibet have battled through leg-sucking mud amid the threat of fresh flooding to search for thousands of people still missing after a deadly wall of water swept through the Himalayan border zone, engulfing entire villages.

The latest updates on Sunday put the number of missing at 3,048, including hundreds of foreigners. There was a total of 797 confirmed deaths across Nepal and Tibet, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India.

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© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

Tulshi Patel says mother Hemangini Jitendra Patel and aunt Hema Sunil Amin were last seen at Friendship Bridge on Nepal-China border

• Nepal-Tibet flash flood – latest updates

The daughter of a woman missing in Nepal has told how she traced her mother’s location through a TikTok video posted hours before the devastating flash flood hit.

The catastrophic flash floods that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, thundering down valleys and sweeping away entire villages, have killed at least 675 people, while more than 3,000 remain missing.

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© Photograph: Armand Terruli/Guardian Community

© Photograph: Armand Terruli/Guardian Community

© Photograph: Armand Terruli/Guardian Community

Family members pin photos of Nepal’s missing to hospital wall as people try not to give up hope on loved ones

• Nepal-Tibet flash flood – latest updates

Posters of missing people line the wall of the hospital, the glue still fresh beneath. A schoolgirl smiling in her uniform; a beaming, chubby-cheeked baby; a couple smiling on their wedding day; a young man, hands on hips, atop a mountain peak; a young girl with flowing hair, peeking out from behind a door.

These faces are just a fraction of the thousands who have not been seen since deadly flash floods coursed through the Himalayas and wiped away entire villages. By Saturday morning, the toll of the missing had risen to almost 3,000, in both Nepal and Tibet.

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© Photograph: Ahmer Khan/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ahmer Khan/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ahmer Khan/The Guardian

Family members pin photos of Nepal’s missing to hospital wall as people try not to give up hope on loved ones

• Nepal-Tibet flash flood – latest updates

Posters of missing people line the wall of the hospital, the glue still fresh beneath. A schoolgirl smiling in her uniform; a beaming, chubby-cheeked baby; a couple smiling on their wedding day; a young man, hands on hips, atop a mountain peak; a young girl with flowing hair, peaking out from behind a door.

These faces are just a fraction of the thousands who have not been seen since deadly flash floods coursed through the Himalayas and wiped away entire villages. By Saturday morning, the toll of the missing had risen to almost 3,000, in both Nepal and Tibet.

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© Photograph: Ahmer Khan/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ahmer Khan/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ahmer Khan/The Guardian

Nepal requests foreign ⁠help in identification and storing of bodies, DNA testing and rescuing people from tunnels

• Visual guide: how the deadly flooding unfolded

• New flood fears and a race to free group trapped in tunnel

Poor weather temporarily hampered aerial rescue operations in Nepal on Saturday as the search for thousands of missing people in areas devastated by catastrophic flash floods along the border with China continued.

The combined toll in Nepal and Tibet rose to 691 dead and more than 3,000 people missing after China’s latest update on Sunday. Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, while Nepal’s disaster agency said late Saturday that the death toll had climbed to 675 with 2,498 people missing.

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© Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images

© Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images

© Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images