Power Returns to Tibet's Buried Border Town as Nepal's Mudslide Toll Reaches 1,290

One week after an ice avalanche set off a chain of debris flows that buried a Himalayan border crossing, the disaster zone on China's side of the line is getting its infrastructure back. State Grid announced on the evening of September 3 that temporary power had been restored to the core zone of Gyirong port in Tibet, after repair crews rebuilt the flood-destroyed stretches of the 216 national highway and strung emergency lines through terrain still prone to landslides and rockfall. Crews from State Grid's Tibet subsidiary worked round the clock in the window the reopened road created — 106 emergency personnel and 236 pieces of equipment, by the utility's account — and switched the lines on at 8 p.m.

The electricity matters more than the milestone suggests. As one Weibo explainer noted, the Gyirong valley sits at 1,900 to 2,600 metres, where September nights already drop towards 5°C and rain drifts through the gorge most days; with power on, the search command post, night lighting, communications base stations and the shelters for displaced residents all run again. The repair itself was grinding. Baidu's coverage of the road crews described rescue teams sweeping assigned sectors with shovels, walkie-talkies crackling over the sound of rock — the sort of manual search that has defined the past week, as China's rescuers fought water on two fronts across the border region.

Across the border in Nepal, the numbers have kept climbing. Police there put the death toll from the mudslide disaster at 1,290 as of the evening of September 3, China News Network reported — a figure that has roughly quadrupled since the first days of the event, when the count stood in the hundreds and nearly 100 Chinese nationals were listed as missing. Residents filmed the moment the flood arrived: a wall of water carrying boulders and sediment down a valley, swallowing buildings whole in seconds. The footage has circulated widely on Weibo, a reminder of how fast the disaster unfolded and why early-warning systems became part of the Chinese conversation almost immediately.

The disaster has also produced its first diplomatic consequence. On September 3, Nepal's foreign minister met China's ambassador in Kathmandu, thanked Beijing for its emergency assistance, and said Nepal does not intend to seek 'climate justice compensation' from China or any individual country — it will pursue international compensation through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change instead. Baidu carried the statement prominently, and Chinese readers followed the question closely: the disaster began with a glacier collapse on the Nepali side of the border, and early speculation had raised the possibility of cross-border liability claims. Kathmandu's formulation keeps the issue inside the UN climate process, where 'loss and damage' funding is negotiated collectively rather than between neighbours.

The immediate work continues on both sides of the line. Chinese crews are holding the repaired road and power lines against a mountainside that keeps shedding rock, while Nepalese police continue to raise the count of the dead. What neither can yet answer is the longer question the disaster posed from its first hour: how the Himalayas' changing glaciers are to be lived with, and who pays when they fail.