The river rose 8.4 metres in a matter of hours in Nepal's Gorkha province. About 40 homes and several bridges were reportedly swept away, while five people remain missing. The flood struck a wider region still struggling with the aftermath of Nepal's devastating August disaster.
The Kathmandu Post reported that Jagat-Bagar was among the worst-hit settlements. Salleri and Ghattikhola, in the Chumnubri rural municipality, were also affected. The paper said the flood engulfed a shelter near the Ungilung River in Chumchet, where five people were reported missing.
The river burst its banks at around 5:55 in the morning local time, equivalent to 02:10 in Barcelona. Preliminary information indicates that a debris-laden mix of snow and mud slid into the river near Chumnubri. The material blocked the Budhi Gandaki before accumulated water surged downstream.
Six people have already been rescued by helicopter. The Nepal Army evacuated them from Jagat, where the danger of further landslides remained high. Military and police teams were sent into affected areas to search for people and assess the damage.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah said several helicopters had been deployed to search for those still unaccounted for. No deaths had been reported in the latest information. Rescue teams were working across three settlements after the flood dragged buildings into the current, said Narayan Prasad Sapokta, the administrative director of the Chumnubri rural municipality.
Reports said a hydropower project camp was also damaged. A motorable bridge linking Gorkha with neighbouring Dhading was destroyed.
Authorities sent about 200,000 early-warning messages to residents in districts exposed to further flooding. Dharmendra Kumar Mishra, Gorkha's senior district official, urged people living along downstream riverbanks to leave immediately for safer ground.
Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority warned residents in Gorkha, Tanahun, Chitwan, East Nawalparasi and West Nawalparasi. The authority also urged people along the Budhi Gandaki and the connected Trishuli corridor to move to higher ground as the surge travelled downstream. Videos circulating on social media show houses and makeshift structures being carried between steep mountain slopes.
The suspected blockage occurred on the Budhi Gandaki, one of the tributaries feeding the Trishuli farther downstream. That geography connects the new emergency to the August catastrophe, when a glacier collapse triggered a flood that killed 1,457 people, with thousands still missing.
The earlier disaster affected areas that included Gorkha. Damaged roads and bridges obstructed aid delivery and movement through remote communities.
A local resident told the press that a powerful rumble woke people before dawn and sent them running uphill. Some reached higher ground in time; others were caught inside hotels as they slept. The account points to the central danger of this flood: the river rose after a sudden obstruction, rather than through a gradual increase in water that people could easily observe.
Nepal's government had announced that search and rescue operations linked to the August catastrophe would end more than a month later, as attention shifted to reconstruction. Roads and bridges were the immediate priorities, especially in remote areas where destroyed infrastructure had complicated transport and aid distribution.
The new flood added rescue work to that unfinished recovery. Mountain communities remained exposed to a destructive surge sent downstream by a blocked channel.
The warning system worked quickly enough to trigger a mass evacuation alert. The loss of homes and bridges showed how little protection was available once a river was blocked above a settlement. The latest flood struck a region where rescue routes and basic infrastructure were already damaged.
Earlier flood alerts show how quickly authorities can shift from monitoring water levels to ordering evacuations. In Gorkha, that shift came after the 8.4-metre rise; five people still missing remain the immediate measure of the disaster's human cost.
