A glacier collapse in Nepal's mountains near Tibet appears to have triggered the flash floods that killed hundreds of people in late August 2026, but footage viewed thousands of times online after the disaster is unrelated. The clip, which has been circulating for years, was taken in the Patagonia region of Chile.
"A sudden glacial collapse in Tibet sent a massive flood wave roaring toward #Nepal!" reads the caption of a video shared August 27 on X.
The footage, viewed more than 12,000 times, shows a large section of a glacier breaking off into a body of water.
Similar videos and claims spread elsewhere on X after catastrophic flooding and landslides struck the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26 ( archived link).
Emergency teams have recovered 472 bodies after a tsunami-like wall of freezing water and mud crashed down, burying homes, smashing bridges and sweeping away vehicles.
More than 1,400 people are missing, including trekkers in the Himalayas and scores of Hindu pilgrims to Tibet's sacred snow-capped Mount Kailash.
A glacier collapse appears to have triggered the disaster.
"A large chunk of glacier fell from about 5,200 metres (about 17,000 feet)... into a valley," Simon Cox, principal scientist at New Zealand's GNS Science, previously told AFP ( archived link).
It "transformed into this raging mass of debris... where it picks up rocks and sediment and trees and anything in the way and fires it on down through the canyon," he said.
The wall of water first impacted a border post before travelling downstream into Nepal, flooding villages and bringing down bridges and buildings.
The video circulating online, however, does not show the collapse -- it was filmed in the Chilean Patagonia years ago.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared clip led to similar footage published to YouTube on November 11, 2022 ( archived link).
The caption from Licet Studios, a video licensing company, says: "An incredibly large chunk of the Grey Glacier's ice-sheet breaks off and flips over in a spectacular way in Southern Patagonia, Chile".
Licet Studios attributed the video to "Laura Q". AFP f ound someone with the same name who reviewed a guided tour of Patagonia that includes a stop in Torres del Paine National Park, where the Grey Glacier is located ( archived link).
AFP geolocated the footage to the eastern side of the glacier using Google Earth and Maps, which includes numerous visuals taken from the same viewpoint (archived here and here).
The Grey Glacier, one of the main sights in Torres del Paine National Park popular with tourists and hikers, has receded for years due to human-caused climate change ( archived link).
AFP reported in 2019 that two large icebergs broke off the glacier in just two weeks ( archived link).