Families desperately search for missing Latvian travelers after Nepal floods
Flash floods triggered by a glacier collapse in Nepal have killed more than 350 people, with the fate of many Latvian citizens still unknown. Relatives are appealing on social media for information about a group of roughly 30 Latvians.
Sudden floods in Nepal, caused by the collapse of a massive glacier chunk, have killed at least 353 people so far, with several hundred more still unaccounted for. Latvian citizens may be among them, and the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is continuing to assess the situation.
The ministry's Consular Department has already been contacted by relatives of 25 people who may be in Nepal, and a combined list from various sources has grown to roughly 40 names — though the ministry stresses this is only an approximate figure. The situation is complicated by the fact that no licensed Latvian travel operator organized group trips to Nepal during this period, suggesting the travelers went independently.
Alongside official channels, help is also being sought on social media. A post has circulated asking for assistance in reaching a group of about 30 Latvian travelers who cannot currently be contacted. The author of the post is asking for any information about the group's location, route or contact with its members, stressing that even the smallest fragment of information matters and could reach guides or other travelers in the affected region.
What happened in Nepal
According to the news agency LETA, the disaster was triggered when a large chunk of ice fell from an altitude of about 5,200 meters into a river, unleashing a powerful flow of mud and debris down a canyon. It first struck a border post before surging downstream, flooding villages and destroying bridges and buildings.
The event was powerful enough to initially be registered as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake, but the US Geological Survey later confirmed the seismic activity was actually caused by the glacier collapse and resulting debris flow, not an earthquake. One river monitoring station recorded a water level of 12.3 meters, while several stations downstream stopped transmitting data as the flood progressed.
In total, 826 people remain missing, including at least 579 tourists, both local and foreign. Search and rescue efforts are ongoing, though the affected area remains largely inaccessible, forcing experts to rely on satellite imagery to reconstruct events. Scientists note that a warming climate continues to increase the risk of such glacier collapses worldwide.
