Relatives of missing tourists asked for blood samples and photos, as efforts continue to rescue trapped hydropower workers

• Nepal-Tibet floods – latest updates

• Visual guide: How the Nepal-Tibet flash flood unfolded

Nepali rescuers have built temporary bridges to reach remote areas and dug through the ruins of hydropower projects in the Himalayas to rescue hundreds of trapped workers, as the death toll passed 1,000 nearly ⁠a week after devastating ​floods left a trail of destruction across the country’s towns and valleys.

About 600 people remain stuck in several devastated hydropower stations that have become the focus of rescue efforts. The prime ⁠minister, Balendra Shah, said more than 11,000 people had been rescued across the affected region, and power and communication lines had been restored in some areas.

The deluge capped a summer of extreme climate events, from deadly heatwaves to wildfires. We must take action now

For millennia, the high peaks of the Himalayas were held together by an invisible, frozen cement – permafrost and glacial ice that bound ancient rock into seemingly unshakable fortresses. But as the planet continues to warm, this alpine glue is liquefying.

The glacial collapse and deluge in Nepal and Tibet was not a freak weather event; it was the structural failure of a mountain itself, nature’s latest commentary on the deadly consequences of human-caused planetary warming. And it was the exclamation point on a summer of extremes, illustrating with a sole unnatural disaster the apocalyptic future that lies in store if we fail to take dramatic climate action.

As families await news of missing loved ones, the disaster is a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is creating a fast-growing threat. Plus, the town considered India’s ‘Jurassic Park’

• Don’t get This is India delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

It has been hard not to despair while watching the ruinous floods swallow parts of Nepal, and harder, still knowing that the agony compounds each passing day for dozens of Indian families whose members remain unaccounted for.

Social media is awash with desperate pleas, photos and details of the young and old, men and women, from Mumbai to Kolkata, posted by families searching for traces of life. The disaster unfolded when a melting glacier slammed into the valley below, unleashing a deadly cascade of rock and ice down the Bhote Kashi River, which flows from Tibet into Nepal.