Nepal’s towns in ruins: What it will take to rebuild after massive flood

DEVIGHAT, NEPAL – Bir Man Chitrakar and his family had a thriving business. They fed pilgrims going to the Jalapa Devi Temple in Devighat at a restaurant they ran out of the ground floor of their house in this small town in Nepal’s Nuwakot district.

But on Aug 26, Chitrakar’s enterprise and home by the Trishuli River were gone in minutes when a catastrophic flood barrelled down from the Himalayas, hitting several downstream villages in northern Nepal.

His family’s three-storey concrete house – the one they had built after a 2015 earthquake demolished their earlier, more modest one – was destroyed and remains mostly buried in the silt the flood left behind.

“Nothing was left. We could not salvage even a spoon or a glass,” Chitrakar, 60, told The Straits Times, standing in the family’s barely recognisable kitchen. Its tiles, with images of utensils and colourful fruits, were caked with mud.

The family of 11 had survived by running to higher ground, from where they witnessed the horror unfold. Chitrakar’s wife still has not seen the devastation up close. “She will have a heart attack if she comes here,” he added.

The family have now been forced to seek temporary refuge at a relief camp, eating charity meals at a community kitchen there.

Too scared to rebuild their house at the same spot by the river, once considered prime real estate in this town, they are hoping to relocate to a safer place with government support. “This river is going to wash us away again… How can we live here?” Chitrakar asked.

This question is on the minds of many people in Nepal.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in Nepal and Tibet and more than 6,000 people remain missing after the flood, which was triggered by an ice-shelf collapse setting off what many have described as a “Himalayan tsunami” roaring down the valley. Around 1.6 million people are affected in some way or other.

The disaster smashed vital economic lifelines in this mountainous country, where roughly one in five Nepalis lives below the official poverty line of less than US$1.30 (S$1.70) a day.

The Nepal government’s Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment report released on Sept 10 says that 15 villages and towns across five districts along the rivers have been destroyed.

After the ice shelf in the Himalayas collapsed, it burst through the Nepal-China border post in Gyirong county.

Sweeping down the Lhende Khola, Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers, it flattened entire habitations at Timure and Syabrubesi in Rasuwa district, going through hilly Dhunche, smashing riverside homes downstream in Betrawati, Bidur, Trishuli and Devighat in Nuwakot district and slowing as it went southwards into Chitwan district, where many bodies washed up.

Thousands of homes, 18 schools, seven health facilities, several places of worship, dozens of hotels, markets as well as roads, bridges and government offices were either entirely wiped out or so damaged that they are unsalvageable.

About 300 homes in Devighat were destroyed

Devighat residents returned to ruined homes

The disaster destroyed 69km of the main overland route from Kathmandu to Nepal’s border with China, which meandered along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers. About 33 motorable bridges and 53 footbridges are also damaged. This has severely impacted tourism, which comprises 7 per cent of Nepal’s gross domestic product, as well as trade with China, the source of about 19 per cent of Nepal’s imports.

Hydropower, another cornerstone of Nepal’s local economy, is also hit, with 13 hydropower projects affected, testing the country’s hydro-first strategy and energy export plans.

More than a fortnight after the disaster, the focus has shifted from rescues and immediate survival to the enormous task of long-term recovery. Given the scale of the flood’s impact, this means rebuilding not just roads, bridges and buildings, but entire livelihoods.

The years-long process is estimated to cost around US$4.74 billion.

Upreti said government agencies and volunteers were now focused on clearing debris, reconnecting electricity and telecommunications and carrying out temporary road repairs, for people to resume business as much as possible. The government has given itself 1½ months to complete a full-scale post-disaster needs assessment report, which would kick-start recovery.

Himalayan geological experts say the site of the ice shelf collapse remains hazardous, and that the now-exposed bedrock, along with melting glacial lakes, suggests the likelihood of more disasters.

“Now when we rebuild, we must avoid or minimise future disaster impacts,” said Upreti.

Families must be rehabilitated and infrastructure – from roads to schools – must be reconstructed, possibly away from rivers.

As senior editor Anil Giri from The Kathmandu Post told ST, Nepal “built back better” after the 2015 earthquake, but “after this flood, every expert and layman is talking about building back better – and in safer places”.

The once picturesque hill town of Devighat, about 57km north of Kathmandu, is one of the worst-affected. Many houses here have been uprooted, transforming what was once a colourful mosaic of many-hued roofs and walls visible from the air into sprawling grey sludge.

The road leading up to the Jalapa Devi Temple is also submerged under silt, and the clear waters of the Trishuli, which Chitrakar described as once “glass-like”, remain turbid and brown. “We survived so many years drinking this water, but this very water has now taken away lives,” he added.

Not far from the river stood Ram Chandra Khadka’s three-floor house, which he built with money earned from his pharmacy store in Devighat.

“I have been living here for 40 years and we have never seen a flood this high,” Khadka told ST.

“I have been reduced to zero,” the 70-year-old added, estimating his total financial hit, including from his damaged and lost stock of pharmaceutical products, at over seven million Nepali rupees (S$58,000). “I couldn’t even take my mobile phone that was charging (in the house).”

The grey T-shirt and teal shorts he wore were handouts from the relief camp where he was staying, so he could change out of the clothes he wore the day he fled for his life.

Khadka hopes to rebuild on the same plot of land, but wants the government to “build embankments strong enough” first to prevent further floods. If not, he too will relocate if the government gives him land at a safer location.

Communities impacted by the flood are struggling to imagine their future. Must they recreate what they had built over generations on the destroyed site? Or should they start anew in an unfamiliar place to guard future generations?

For Karma Chhering Tamang, the answer is unclear.

The 65-year-old is from Syabrubesi, a vital mountain village of Tibetan Buddhists near the China-Nepal border that flourished in recent years as the trailhead for major Himalayan treks into the Langtang Valley and Gosainkunda, and on sacred Tamang heritage trails.

One of the first settlements to bear the brunt of the flood, Syabrubesi was obliterated, a landscape now of mud and dust where people and homes once were. It is also still unreachable by road. Survivors there had to be airlifted to safety, and no one has been able to go back, even to recover the dead.

Tamang cannot forget the loud “bomb-like explosion” and the wall of fast-moving rocks and dust on the day of the flood. From higher up the mountain peak where he had gone to farm, he had watched his heritage village being “swept away in a minute”, taking with it his wife, sons, daughters-in-law and three grandchildren.

Tamang’s only balm is that he is surrounded by people grieving just like he is. Several broken families who survived in Syabrubesi now reside in the Gosok Phuntsok Choeling Monastery— better known as Ghosok Gumba– in Kathmandu.

On Sept 8, monks held the two-week memorial ceremony for flood victims. At one point, a woman’s sudden high wail pierced through their low, guttural chanting.

Many survivors said they were too afraid to go back to their destroyed home town. But as members of traditional Himalayan communities, they also wanted to be near the mountain range.

Tamang wants to be resettled where his ancestors were, but it is now rubble, and unsafe. “I have nowhere to call home,” he said. He is torn between his love for the Himalayas and his fear of another flood.

“Why do people live by the river? Because highways are near rivers, trade happens there, and the fields are most fertile. Resettlement areas that offer similar opportunities will be few,” said Amish Mulmi, a Kathmandu-based author whose book All Roads Lead North: Nepal’s Turn To China, explores how trade routes in Rasuwa developed around Chinese-built highways and infrastructure. Rasuwa was one of the areas worst hit by the flash flood.

Rebuilding must account for the economic and social pull of the rivers while also recognising their vulnerability to floods as low-lying, exposed areas.

While emergency shelter remains the immediate priority, Eliza Sthapit, national director of Habitat for Humanity Nepal, a non-profit organisation that has a team deployed in Rasuwa, said families will need sustained support to repair and rebuild in ways that are “safer, more resilient and rooted in the needs of their communities”.

This longer-term reconstruction, she added, will also depend on damage assessments, government recovery plans, access to safe land and available funding.

Upreti said: “We must explore potential settlement areas, do geohazard assessments and then permanently relocate people to these safer areas.”

Where mountainous Nepal will find these new, safe regions for at least a million people is a looming question.

According to Nepal’s Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle, the government has sufficient resources for rescue and relief, but will need to mobilise additional funds for reconstruction once the full extent of the damage is established.

The country is already actively seeking grants to avoid an additional debt burden, while also making its case for climate compensation from the world’s biggest polluters rather than seek aid.

​​Prime Minister Balendra Shah, who is set to attend the 81st United Nations General Assembly on Sept 24, will use his address to highlight the heavy toll that climate change and related disasters have repeatedly taken on Nepal, despite the country’s negligible contribution to global carbon emissions.

Relocations after previous disasters have been uneven in terms of their success.

For instance, the village of Laprak in Gorkha district, near the 2015 earthquake’s epicentre, was successfully relocated to Gupsipakha, where the Non-Resident Nepali Association – a non-governmental organisation – built more than 600 houses. Nepal’s National Reconstruction Authority also relocated 46 other villages.

But some 260 families displaced by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people, and who had yet to be resettled, found their makeshift riverside settlement of Khalte in Dhading district in central Nepal swept away by the Aug 26 flood.

The authorities said most Khalte residents are still missing. In 2018, Khalte had been officially declared unsafe to live in because of flooding and landslides, but the earthquake-displaced families had nowhere else to go. A 2025 flash flood from a burst glacial lake killed nine people from there, but others stayed on. Large parts of Tallopahire, where they were to be relocated, have also been swept away.

Disaster survivors have also faced prolonged delays in accessing compensation or financial aid. Nepal News, an online news portal, reported on Sept 9 that survivors of a 2024 flood in Kavre in central Nepal were still living in temporary shelters.

Having lost their houses, these families, it added, are still trapped in a bureaucratic labyrinth ranging from damage assessment and beneficiary verification to grant disbursement.

A UN Development Programme assessment found that access to housing finance to help earthquake survivors rebuild homes was plagued by issues such as banks’ unwillingness to grant loans and poor implementation of financial schemes.

As a result, many poor households not only built much smaller houses than they had before, but also borrowed money from informal sources at highly exploitative interest rates, increasing their debt burden.

Experts with experience in post-disaster resettlement say the government could draw on these lessons and factor in livelihoods, social ties and future disaster risks before deciding where to relocate flood victims.

Nepal must not only build new houses and villages, but also rebuild roads and bridges to reconnect areas cut off by the flash flood.

For now, Shankar Mijar, 45, has to take the shaky zipline across the swollen Trishuli River to reach his house in a marooned part of Devighat. Brown river water laps at a set of concrete stairs to nowhere – the only remnants of a decades-old bridge, ripped apart by the flood.

Shankar’s house, on the higher side of Devighat, is still liveable, but the flood cleaved the access road in two. Residents on his side were stuck there for days, stretching rations at home and boiling water several times before drinking it.

“It was only after the zipline was installed that I could go to the doctor for my typhoid and buy some groceries,” Shankar said, worried about when he will be able to access markets again to sell his farm produce or go to Kathmandu for construction labour, his main sources of income.

Connectivity will also be needed to restart trade and transport operations, as well as tourism.

Kamola Thapaliya, a restaurateur on the highway to the Mount Kailash and Langtang Valley treks, said her earnings had taken a hit.

The only people in her Jimbu Restaurant and Bar on Sept 6 were a group of college girls who had walked up from nearby regions to see what was left, or not, of the once-bustling 59,000-strong Trishuli market town, where they used to go for chaat (snack) parties and hang out by the river.

Having run for her life during the flood, Kamola, 35, is grateful that she has not lost any loved ones. Miraculously, the deluge spared her garden restaurant, which serves Nepali cuisine and beer.

But she is among thousands of Nepalis indirectly affected by the disaster, and whose well-laid plans the flood has shattered.

“I built a lodge with air-conditioned rooms too, thankfully higher up the hill away from the river. Now I don’t know when visitors will come,” Kamola told ST. “I don’t think Trishuli town will develop again like it used to be. Not in my lifetime, anyway.”

After the flood, many tourists cancelled their trips to Nepal.

September to December is the season for trekking and pilgrimages in the very areas hit by the flood. But the Langtang Valley trail and the route for the sacred trek to Mount Kailash are now impassable because of landslides, which have blocked the shortest routes.

Trekking is central to Nepal’s tourist economy and has transformed remote mountain villages. The trekking and mountaineering sector directly supports at least 200,000 formal jobs, while seasonal roles employ around 50,000 support workers, including professional guides, assistant guides and porters.

But flood-affected residents who run small eateries and highway shops are today in relief camps. Many trekking guides who were with foreign tourists are still missing.

And with roads still destroyed, tourism cannot restart.

There are three major crossings to China from Nepal. The Rasuwa-Gyirong crossing with its route along the Trishuli and Bhotekoshi rivers was the primary overland one for cross-border commerce and its loss has impacted trade significantly.

Another, the Tatopani-Zhangmu crossing, remains closed owing to the risk of landslides. At the moment, trucks are using the alternative, high-altitude Mustang-Korala route, but the route is regularly disrupted by landslides, and “Mustang does not yet have the accompanying infrastructure to facilitate large-volume trade”, said Mulmi.

“Even if Customs points are built, roads will need to be upgraded for easing post-flood disruptions,” he added.

The Rasuwa-Gyirong highway was a source of income for many like Raju Bishwakarma, 33, a truck driver who ferried goods along this route, earning about 20,000 Nepali rupees a month to support his family. He has been missing since Aug 26, when he was reported to be near Timure in Rasuwa district.

His 34-year-old wife, Amrita Bishwakarma, a homemaker, now worries about how she will support their three young children. “I can’t do any heavy work, so I will look for tasks such as house help or cooking,” she said, hoping for government financial support to educate and look after her children.

As 13 hydropower projects along the Trishuli River were damaged, the flood also raises the question of Nepal’s over-reliance on hydropower in a fragile Himalayan ecosystem.

Hydropower makes up almost 95 per cent of Nepal’s total installed electricity capacity. The country exports surplus hydroelectricity to neighbouring Bangladesh and India, earning nearly US$200 million a year. Nepal had hoped to expand its hydropower plants to sell even more, to afford to buy back power in the winter when rivers run drier.

But the flood effectively knocked out nearly 800 megawatts of installed and under-construction capacity, about 10 per cent of Nepal’s hydropower capacity. One of the oldest hydroelectric plants in Devighat, commissioned 42 years ago, was wiped out.

“We have to build them back. If we fail to recover these hydropower projects, a huge economic sector will be lost,” said Upreti. “Taking informed risks should be the priority. And once they operate, how can we avoid flood risk? So some mitigation measures like early warning systems should be there.”

But The Kathmandu Post’s Giri wonders who will work on building these projects now. “They will need assurances, insurance and safety,” he added.

Hundreds of engineers and workers are still feared trapped inside the tunnels of the hydropower structures.

On Sept 8, the families of engineers missing in the Trishuli 3B power project protested in Kathmandu, demanding faster rescues of their loved ones.

Sumana Shreshta Amatya, whose husband Sumesh Amatya, a senior geologist in the project, was missing, told ST that the family had “never imagined such a risk in a job he took pride in”.

Dozens of other protesters around her shouted that they would never let their children work in hydropower because it’s “like going to a battlefield now”.

Underlining all the talk of northern Nepal’s reconstruction is a steady thrum – a warning of potential disasters to come that has now become more urgent than ever.

“So far we have identified it as a rock-ice avalanche 5,200m up in the Himalayas (northern side of Langtang Lirung near the China-Nepal border),” said Sravan Shrestha, a remote sensing and cryosphere expert at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

The rock and ice collapse was influenced by a range of climatic and geological factors worsened by the impacts of climate change on the high-altitude landscape, according to a scientific analysis by an international team of glaciologists and climate scientists, published by academic collaboration World Weather Attribution.

“Decades of atmospheric warming – caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels – have melted the glacier and pushed the freezing threshold line (0 deg C isotherm) upwards by around 100m of altitude per decade. This has resulted in glacier recession and thawing occurring in permafrost within rock fractures that historically hold high mountain walls together, rendering them unstable,” said the report, adding that the 2015 earthquake could have further preconditioned the slope for collapse.

“If you see the image of that region now, it is still very scary. The bedrock is exposed, and the glacier is on this steep slope. There is a probability that the remaining glacier might also fall,” Shrestha said. “There’s a high risk of flooding.”

Using data on the risk and trajectories of glacial events or floods, ICIMOD is helping the Nepal government develop a list of high-risk hot spots in the country, meant to inform resettlement, hydropower project locations and other construction.

Most of all, hot-spot mapping will help develop early warning systems for evacuation.

People in downstream villages get official SMSes from the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology about incoming floods, asking them to move to safe ground. Most admitted that they ignore these SMSes.

On Aug 26, the system reportedly sent out some 670,000 SMSes between 9.15am and 9.16am to vulnerable communities. The emergency alert did not say how fast or how big the flood would be. Moreover, it was too late: The force of the flood had destroyed many automated river monitoring gauges, which meant that people at higher altitudes received no warnings.

“We need to invest in preparedness and in advanced early warning systems that reflect what is actually happening in these mountains,” said Shrestha, adding that warnings had been about glacial lake outburst floods, but the real threat now includes rock-ice failures, moving glaciers and ground displacement.

In the face of the flood’s devastation, Nepal seems to have the strategies and will to undo past mistakes, repeat successes and safeguard its beautiful landscape and resilient people. But it lacks the financial resources and capacity to surmount the enormity of the challenge alone.

Hopefully, this monster flood will serve as the wake-up call needed for other countries to come to Nepal’s aid, in a more far-sighted reconstruction than ever before.