An avalanche followed by a flash flood on the border between Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday (26) left nearly 600 people dead and about 2,000 missing, according to the latest tally released by BBC News Mundo. An earlier version of the same report, republished by Folha de S.Paulo, spoke of hundreds dead and 1,400 missing, a sign that the figures are still being updated. The disaster struck the Himalayan region, including the Gyirong border crossing, and images of people running for their lives were seen around the world.
Nearly 4,500 people are working on the rescue effort during what are considered critical hours for recovering bodies. The Devighat area in Nepal is the hardest hit: the flood destroyed entire houses and roads and left hundreds homeless. According to the Red Cross, around 93,000 people may have been affected. Because the region is a popular tourist destination, foreigners are among the dead, and many bodies were carried downstream to distant districts, which is expected to complicate identification.
The reports consulted do not mention Brazilians among the victims. For Brazil, the episode matters in an indirect but concrete way. The tragedy puts glacier melt and glacial lake monitoring back on the international agenda, an issue debated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), held in Belem in 2025. It also resonates domestically in a country that has debated monitoring failures since the dam collapses in Mariana, in 2015, and Brumadinho, in 2019, two of the worst industrial disasters in Brazilian history.
Glacier collapse is the most likely cause
The avalanche was initially attributed to a magnitude 4.4 earthquake recorded by sensors from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The agency itself later revised that explanation: the most likely hypothesis is that a glacier collapsed before the tremor. According to the USGS, the rupture of a large part of the glacier may have caused the earthquake, swept into the valley carrying ice, rocks and sediment, and blocked the channel of the Lhende Khola river. When the blockage gave way, an enormous surge of water hit the populated areas. The hypothesis is consistent with satellite images showing the collapse, but still needs to be confirmed by more advanced scientific studies.
Geologists interviewed by The New York Times, in an article republished by Folha, believe the floods were triggered by a high-altitude landslide combined with the glacial collapse, which released enormous volumes of water. Eran Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alaska, has spent years studying floods caused by glacial lake outbursts at the Mendenhall Glacier, which affect the city of Juneau every year. According to him and other disaster response specialists, existing warning systems focus on specific points, such as the levels of glacial lakes prone to overflowing. Predicting a sudden collapse like the one in the Himalayas would require intensive, resource-heavy monitoring across very large areas.
Interests at stake
For Nepal, which relies on mountain tourism as an important source of income, the tragedy pressures the government to strengthen warning infrastructure in a region that includes some of the world's highest mountains, glaciers and unstable terrain. On the Tibetan side, the disaster occurred in an area controlled by China, where glaciers feed major Asian rivers, making any change in the melt regime a matter of regional interest. Authorities remain on alert for further landslides, and rescue teams continue searching for survivors in the devastated area.