The swollen Budhi Gandaki river has swept away homes and suspension bridges in Gorkha district in central Nepal. The BBC reports that Nepal’s army confirmed it had rescued around 50 people from areas along the river. Five people remained missing at the time of the report, with no deaths reported.
The flood struck on Sunday 11 October. According to officials quoted by the BBC, the river level at one location rose from two metres to almost 8.5 metres within a few hours. The water also destroyed monitoring equipment. Binod Parajuli, a meteorologist working for the Nepalese government, told the BBC that a hydrological station had been swept away and had stopped transmitting data from that location.
Nepal’s disaster risk reduction and management authority said the current had swept away around a dozen homes and several suspension bridges. A hydropower project was also damaged, and some construction equipment was carried away by the water. The full extent of the damage was not yet known.
Aid organisations are also responding to the disaster. Save the Children said it was mobilising an emergency response team following the flood.
The cause of the sudden surge in the Budhi Gandaki remains unknown. The figures for missing people and the absence of reported deaths reflect the situation at the time of the BBC report, rather than a final account of the disaster’s impact.
