Technology and Science30 August, 20263 min read
Snopes Confirms Flood Pulverized Tibet's Gyirong Port Border Crossing Between Nepal And China
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CCTV footage shows Gyirong border crossing pulverized by flash flood. Toll and missing figures rise into thousands across Nepal-Tibet floods.
6 outlets told this the same way.
CCTV and the Border
Snopes said it found no evidence the CCTV footage was artificially generated or doctored and that drone footage taken in the aftermath confirmed the structure was pulverized at Tibet's Gyirong Port, a land crossing between Nepal and China.
The clip, which Snopes said spread across multiple social media sites including X, Facebook and Reddit as rescuers raced to find survivors of a deadly landslide and flash flood in Nepal on Aug. 26, 2026, showed the flood cascading down a valley as dozens of people attempted to flee before obliterating the scene as mud flooded the screen.
Snopes reported that the time shown in the footage was Chinese time and that it was around 9 o'clock in Nepal, with the footage captioned as “How terrible was the flood? CCTV footage from the immigration office on the Chinese side of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing.”
The BBC described the human toll and uncertainty along the Nepal-Tibet border, with sisters Shreya and Ashna Ahuja telling the BBC that their parents, Deepak and Madhu Ahuja, had been at the border at 8am about an hour before the floods struck.
The BBC also reported that Nepali authorities said more than 575 people had died, while it said nearly 2,000 people were missing, including tourists from the US, Australia, Canada, India, and the UK.
Missing, Rescue, and Voices
The Guardian reported that poor weather temporarily hampered aerial rescue operations in Nepal on Saturday and that the combined toll in Nepal and Tibet rose to 691 dead and more than 3,000 people missing after China’s latest update on Sunday. Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, while Nepal’s disaster agency said late Saturday that the death toll had climbed to 675 with 2,498 people missing, and the Guardian said more than 3,700 people had been rescued in Nepal so far. The Guardian said that when a Chinese rescue team reached the all-but-obliterated Gyirong border crossing complex for the first time on Friday, they found “nothing but ruins,” and it added that surveillance camera footage showed huge torrents of water and debris engulfing buildings and people trying to flee on Wednesday.
In a separate account, the BBC quoted Radhika Sharma saying, “No one has any answers,” after she told the BBC that her parents were at the border at 8am about an hour before the floods hit. The BBC also reported that Leslie Crespi, a community liaison for the Isha Foundation, said the group had been working on immigration paperwork in what was meant to be an earthquake-resistant building near the border when the water came through, adding “They were like family,” as her voice broke.
What’s Next and What’s at Risk
As search and rescue continued, the Guardian said Nepal has now said it needs foreign help in specialised and technical areas, but not in search and rescue, and it quoted foreign minister Shisir Khanal saying there was “no need for repetition in this.” The Guardian reported that Nepal requested India and China provide bailey bridges after about two dozen bridges were destroyed, and it said India had sent three flights carrying about 60 tons of relief material to Nepal including blankets, medicines, food and water purification tablets. The Guardian also said China dispatched five tunnel experts from Tibet to Nepal for flood-related rescue work, and it described rescuers clawing through mud and using drilling equipment to reach more than 100 people trapped inside a hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa.
In parallel, the Arabic-language report said drones spotted on Saturday evening a landslide about 2.8 kilometers from a lake formed due to previous landslides, creating a new natural barrier and the onset of a second lake behind it that could threaten further flooding. That report said Nepal’s disaster management authority put the total at 734 deaths in Nepal and 2,498 missing, bringing the total number of missing in Nepal and Tibet to 3,044, while it warned that debris could temporarily block tight sections of the Trisuli River and later fail and unleash new waves of water.