The River Came Without Warning – Nepal’s Flash Floods Leave Children Fighting to Survive
On the morning of 26 August 2026, a wall of water tore through northern Nepal’s mountain valleys while children were on their way to school. Three weeks on, families are still counting their missing — and Save the Children is racing to reach them.
At around nine in the morning on 26 August 2026, a sudden surge in the Bhote Koshi and Lhende river system — triggered, according to preliminary satellite analysis, by an ice-rock avalanche upstream in Tibet — crashed across the Nepal–China border and tore through the settlements of Timure, Rasuwagadhi and Syabrubesi in Rasuwa district. The flood struck with no warning, at the exact hour children were walking to class. Markets, roads, bridges, a customs post and more than a dozen hydropower projects were swept away before the surge poured into the Trishuli River and raced downstream through Nuwakot, Dhading, Gorkha and beyond.
01 Children among the most vulnerable
Children have borne the brunt of this disaster. Some were separated from their parents in the chaos of the rescue operations and taken to different temporary holding centres; overcrowded, in...