Nepal flash flood rescue efforts intensify as death toll nears 600

Kathmandu, Nepal — Rescuers pulled out survivors caked in dark brown mud and helicopters lifted stranded people to safety Friday as Nepal and China raced to respond after catastrophic flash floods killed more than 470 people and left more than 1,500 missing.Nepal authorities said the death toll there rose to 469, injured people were taken to hospitals and helicopters carried more than 3,000 people to safety. Survivors, including the injured, were taken to Kathmandu and other locations.In contrast, on the Chinese side, there was little information on survivors, although the death toll rose to five Friday as state media showed evacuations of villages and leaders' efforts to direct relief efforts.

China's state media previously said 558 people were missing and Nepal's disaster management authority said Friday that 977 people were missing. Hundreds of them were foreigners who were in the area to work, trek or make a pilgrimage to a sacred peak.Nepal police issued a fresh alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibet side had burst. Security personnel and rescue and relief workers were told to stay on high alert and immediately move to a safe location if necessary.It was unclear if the dam is related to the flooding concern from a barrier lake that formed behind a dam made up of debris from the initial flash floods, high up in the Chinese side of the Himalayan mountains.

Nepal police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told The Associated Press that the rescue operation was continuing but with high alert. "It hasn't stopped." Nepali and Chinese authorities warned of further flooding because the barrier lake was overflowing. They urged people in potentially affected areas to move to safer ground. Although Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Friday morning that the lake was more than six miles from Gyirong Port, the hard-hit border crossing with Nepal, it said the risk of flooding was high.It said the lake was at an elevation of 9,680 feet, about 3,280 feet above Gyirong Port.

But CCTV later said flood risks from the overflowing lake were deemed "manageable," the Reuters news agency said.Nepali Army rescuers were working to help people trapped in a hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa, part of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project. In video from the scene, rescuers half-pulled, half-pushed the man covered in dark brown mud out of the tunnel. He was one of likely dozens trapped in the tunnel. Army spokesperson Brig.

Gen. Raja Ram Basnet told The Associated Press the focus was on survivors. "It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud," Basnet said. "Our first priority is rescuing the stranded people." Scientists who've studied satellite images said bedrock underneath a glacier high in the Himalayan region had collapsed, taking part of the glacier with it. The rockfall was so extreme, it reached a magnitude 5.2 seismic measurement.

The rocks and melted water then swelled the rivers in the valleys below, causing a torrent of water that swept buildings, bridges and earth downstream in Tibet and Nepal.Hikmat Singh Ayer, CEO and senior director of the Nepal Tourism Board, told CBS News' Arshad R. Zargar on Thursday that at least 65 Americans were among the missing foreign nationals in the small Himalayan nation, almost doubling the number of U.S. nationals reported missing the previous day.In a subsequent update, the tourism board said 27 foreign nationals had been rescued from the flood zone in the Rasuwa district, including two U.S. nationals identified as a man and woman in their 50s.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told CBS News on Thursday that the agency was aware of about 90 Americans who may be impacted by the floods, and it was continuing to closely track the situation. The department said Thursday that three U.S. citizens had been safely rescued, and the spokesperson said the agency wasn't aware of any U.S. deaths. Nepali Army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet told The Associated Press a team had been deployed Friday to the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project near the Nepal-China border following reports that people were trapped inside a tunnel.

"It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud," Basnet said. "Our first priority is rescuing the stranded people." Videos of the disaster showed floodwaters destroying buildings, bridges and vehicles as people ran in front of the stories-high torrent. In the aftermath, broken concrete lay upended in expanses of brown mud that also caked buildings and buried streets.

Customs officer Karbir Gaire is among some of the survivors in Timure, the closest Nepalese village to the border with China.Gaire reached his office around 8 a.m. on Wednesday and was busy working on his computer when he first felt the ground shake. "Right after the shake, I noticed a black storm coming towards us," he recalled from Kathmandu, where he is back with family. "We all immediately started running out and within a few seconds, we were climbing uphill on the opposite side of our office building.

I think those 10 or so seconds saved some of us." Gaire doesn't remember exactly how many people were in the office when the disaster struck, but his 15 colleagues have gone missing. "It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don't call it a flood, it was a tsunami." He described Timure as a vibrant place filled with government offices, hotels, cafes, banks, primary schools, tea shops and residential buildings, where more than 1,500 people were living.

President Trump said the flooding was terrible to see, describing how "strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks." Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the U.S. spoke with Nepalese leaders and offered to provide "anything they want." Leslie Crespi, a community liaison for the Isha Foundation, a volunteer-run group that promotes well-being founded by Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru Vasudev, told CBS News in an interview that about 80 people who were taking part in its pilgrimage in the region were missing."

At this point we are awaiting word," Crespi said in a phone interview from McMinnville, Tennessee, of the missing pilgrims. "We have done as much outreach as we can through the State Department, through the embassy." The 80 people are from 19 countries, Crespi said, including 22 from the U.S. Crespi said about 1,000 people in total were taking part in the pilgrimage. The 22 missing Americans were all adults, and included 13 women and nine men, the foundation later said in data it provided to CBS News.She said the Isha Foundation has done pilgrimages for 21 years."

In those 21 years, we have never lost a life," Crespi said. "And so we are shocked by it." U.S. citizen Deepak Dandu said his wife, Sridevi Vejella, is among those missing in Nepal. She had just finished a pilgrimage with the Isha Foundation to Mount Kailash in Tibet — a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others — which he said was a "lifelong dream" for her, and was crossing from China into Nepal when the flood hit, he told CBS News.

He said the foundation told him that she was part of a group that were present at the Gyirong Port immigration complex.Dandu was getting ready to board a flight to Hyderabad, India, where his son is. "He is going through a lot, hearing all the news," Dandu said of his son. "I think he is really upset. I'm trying to go there and be with him." One of the missing was 45-year-old Venus Rajnikant Patel, an Indian-born U.S. citizen who recently moved from St.

Louis to Cincinnati to help his family. He was on a guided tour to Mount Kailash. Patel's brother, Dennis, said Venus called him and their parents a few hours before the floods, showing them his hotel room on the Nepalese side of the border and talking about how excited he was to cross into Tibet. He had been planning the pilgrimage for two years, his brother said.Patel's friend Jolene Gosha said she and her friends knew Patel was in Nepal and were devastated when they realized his hotel was right along the border where the floods swept through."

We're just hoping, hoping that by some chance he was able to climb his way out of it," Gosha said. "I don't want to give myself false hope because I know the reality is that he's probably not with us."