There is some absolutely devastating news coming out of Nepal as more than a thousand people have been reported missing after a piece of a glacier is believed to have fallen into a river, setting off a destructive chain reaction that flooded the region along the Nepal-China border on Aug. 26, 2026.
According to CNN, the chunk of glacier made a 7,000-foot drop into the river that was directly below it, making an impact that was so violent that it originally showed up as a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. This caused a wave of pulverized ice, rock, and water to travel the first 13.7 miles downstream at a rate of 120 mph.
The speed at which the water traveled left almost no time for any warnings to be issued, so people weren't able to evacuate ahead of the flooding. Closed-circuit cameras captured some of the footage from the torrent of water that rocked the region, and the posts featuring them have since gone viral on social media, with threads from users like @ade.1057 , amay.a100, and @aaronparnas sharing videos of the devastation.
Trigger warning: These videos can be hard to watch as they feature real people who were swept away in the floodwaters and are presumed dead.
Footage of the catastrophic flooding looks like something you would expect to see in a disaster movie, but sadly many of the viral videos consist of actual video taken during the horrific incident. According to The Guardian, the Nepali government says that more than 1,924 people were missing as of the morning of Aug. 28, 2026, with that number expected to rise.
Additionally, they note that there have already been 579 people confirmed killed in Nepal, and five in Tibet. For those who have already seen the footage, it can be hard to believe that those numbers are so low. That's especially true of the video shared by online political contributor Parnas, who shared a video of people running from the wave in what appears to be part of a town square.
The wave can be seen crashing over a seven-story government building, washing away dozens of people in a single instant.
In another video, a family appears to be trapped on the balcony of a greenhouse as the water rips through their neighborhood, washing away some of the structures that surrounded them. Fortunately, this family appears to have survived the flood, and footage taken after the water receded shows them waving a red fabric as they tried to catch the attention of rescuers.
The location of the towns and communities impacted by the flooding makes them hard to reach, prompting concerns that the true devastation will be much greater than initial reports. Additionally, local government worries that the new lake formed by the broken glacier could soon overflow, causing fresh waves of flooding in the region.
While the incident is still so new and officials are still trying to assess the situation, NPR reports that many climate experts have been warning about the effects rising global temperatures are having on glaciers. While glaciers have been around for thousands of years, experts say that the use of fossil fuels is causing temperatures to rise, destabilizing these massive structures. This has already caused other disasters, according to NPR, including deadly incidents of flooding.
It sounds like Nepal may be especially vulnerable to glacial flooding due to the geography of the region, since glacial melt and other running water naturally flow downstream. However, without addressing the issue causing these glaciers to melt, it's unclear what more the people living in the region can do to protect themselves, especially if a wall of water this large failed to trigger the country's early alert systems.
That being said, it's safe to assume that more information will continue to be shared as officials learn more about what happened, which could hopefully shed more insight into what caused this deadly disaster.