About 90 Americans unaccounted for after catastrophic floods hit Nepal and Tibet
U.S. officials said about 90 U.S. citizens remained unaccounted for Thursday, a day after catastrophic flash floods engulfed a border area of China and Nepal, killing hundreds of people.
In a statement, the U.S. State Department said it is not aware of any U.S. deaths, but three Americans have been rescued.
Many of the missing were on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others.
Among those on a guided tour was Venus Rajnikant Patel, a 45-year-old Indian-born U.S. citizen who recently moved from St. Louis to Cincinnati to help his family.
Patel’s friend Jolene Gosha said she and her friends knew Patel was in Nepal and were devastated when they realized he was staying at a hotel 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.”
Gosha described Patel as an avid traveler who loves dancing and frequently organizes surprise “flash mob” performances for his friends’ weddings and birthdays.
“He’s always smiling from ear to ear,” Gosha said. “He’d dance so goofily and didn’t care who was watching.”
Indian spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev, also known as Sadhguru, said in a post on X that 77 people returning from Mount Kailash with groups organized by his Isha Foundation were at an immigration center in Gyirong, Tibet, when the floods struck. The Isha Foundation told ABC News that 22 of those 77 people were Americans.
The Isha Foundation is a spiritual organization based in India and has a U.S. campus called the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences, a yoga and meditation retreat center in the mountains near McMinnville, Tennessee.
Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Donald Trump said U.S. officials have spoken with Nepalese leaders and offered to provide “anything they want.”
Trump said there were 50 or 60 Americans in the area but added that a full accounting hasn’t been completed.
A glacier collapse may have caused floods
The U.S. Geological Survey first reported a magnitude 4.4 earthquake early Wednesday, about 40 miles north of Kathmandu, near the border.
The agency later updated its analysis to say the seismic event was instead a magnitude 5.2 glacier collapse that sent debris flowing downstream.
A total of 469 people were killed, according to authorities in Nepal and China, and more than 1,400 were missing.
Climate experts at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said an avalanche from a glacier likely caused Wednesday’s flash flood.
In an emailed statement, they said water levels at one point on the Trishuli River rose by as much as 27 feet in half an hour.
The increasingly unstable Himalayan ice system threatens communities, infrastructure and water supplies across one of the world’s most densely populated regions.
The region saw similar flash floods in August 2025, when a glacial lake in Tibet overflowed because of high temperatures. Nine people were killed, and critical infrastructure, including a bridge connecting Nepal and China, was damaged.
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