The ice-and-rock avalanche struck the Lhende valley in Rasuwa at 8.37am on August 26, sending a huge surge of freezing water, rocks and debris downstream. Rescue teams have now recovered 1,204 bodies in Nepal, while 4,216 people remain missing. China has reported 21 deaths and 541 missing, taking the combined toll to 1,225 dead and 4,757 missing.
The latest figures were reported as rescue teams continued searching through thick sludge and damaged hydropower tunnels. More than 800 foreign nationals from over 30 countries are also among the missing in Nepal and China.
According to a report by The Times of India, citing The Kathmandu Post, Nepal’s warning system failed to respond quickly enough to the fast-moving disaster.
Nepal’s Department of Mines and Geology recorded seismic activity when the glacier collapsed but did not issue an alert because the signal did not match the pattern of an earthquake.
The collapse produced a reading of magnitude 4.4, but officials said the nature of the seismic activity meant it fell outside the department’s usual monitoring mandate.
A river gauge at Syabrubesi was also swept away at about 8.50am as water levels rose rapidly. The equipment was designed to track gradual changes rather than sudden flash floods.
By 9am, local authorities had informed the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. An alert was issued at 9.15am, 38 minutes after the avalanche. Some residents, however, received the warning even later.
Anil Pokhrel, former chief executive of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, told The Kathmandu Post that the country needed a more complete warning network.
“There is no such thing as an early warning system in Nepal. Simply having sensors does not mean it’s a system; it has to be much more comprehensive," he said, calling for real-time monitoring, stronger communication and better emergency preparedness.
“If the Chinese sensors detect something upstream, a series of sirens should automatically go off all at once. Text messages should go off with a loud buzzer even if it is on silent mode," Pokhrel added.
The disaster also exposed a major cross-border gap. The Lhende Khola begins in Tibet before flowing into Nepal, but Nepal does not have a comparable operational early-warning protocol with China.
Officials said difficult terrain and limited resources make monitoring remote Himalayan areas challenging.
Rescue teams are still digging, drilling and blasting through debris, particularly around hydropower tunnels where people may remain trapped. At least 17 bodies have also been recovered from rivers downstream in India.
The disaster has renewed calls for Nepal, China and other Himalayan countries to strengthen real-time data sharing and build warning systems capable of detecting cascading disasters before communities are overwhelmed.
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