Rebecca Williams
On the morning of August 26, a wall of water came down the mountain without warning. A large section of glacier broke away on the Nepal–Tibet border and sent a torrent through the valleys below. In minutes, homes, roads and bridges were gone. Whole villages simply are not there anymore.
Nepal Police have confirmed 389 people dead and 466 injured. More than 1,300 people are still missing — including over 700 foreign nationals from two dozen countries. 28 police officers who went in to rescue people are among the missing. Search teams are still digging.
A CNN crew that reached one of the devastated zones described what is left in three words: "It is uninhabitable."
The roads used to reach the worst-hit districts — Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading — have been destroyed. Helicopters are the only way in, and teams on foot are pushing through thick mud and debris to reach people who have been waiting days with nothing. The UN has released US$2 million for water, medical kits and emergency shelter, and has said plainly: it is not close to enough.
And it is not over. Three more days of rain are forecast. Landslide debris is piling up into unstable natural dams. Chinese authorities have issued a high-risk warning about a lake on the border that could burst and flood the same valleys again. An earthquake was recorded in Tibet the same week. The people who survived Wednesday could lose everything a second time.
The children are paying for this the hardest. Kids who lost their parents in the water are now sitting in camps with no clean water, no dry clothes, no blankets, and no one left to look for them. Some of them have not eaten a full meal since the flood came through.
We have combined two emergency appeals into one so every dollar moves faster: medical response for flood survivors, and direct aid for the affected children of Nepal. This fund pays for exactly what is missing on the ground right now — clean water, food, blankets, tents, wound care, antibiotics and essential medicines carried in by mobile medical teams working in the districts helicopters can barely reach.
This is not a someday emergency. Every hour that passes, another survivor with an open wound gets an infection that did not need to happen. Another child spends another freezing night outside. Another family gets hit by the next landslide because nobody got them out in time.
Please give today. If you cannot give, share this — the families in Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading do not have a voice loud enough to reach you on their own. 🙏
