By Saurabh Sharma, Gopal Sharma and Sahana Bajracharya
NUWAKOT, Nepal, Aug 28 (Reuters) - A lake formed by a landslide on the Nepal-China border started to overflow on Friday, triggering panic and putting at risk areas devastated by a flash flood two days ago as rescue efforts were forced to halt temporarily.
Wednesday's catastrophic flood caused by a glacier collapse killed 489 people in Nepal and five in China's Tibet, with almost 1,000 more missing in the two countries.
A huge torrent of rock, ice,
mud and debris cascaded through Himalayan mountain river systems after the collapse, and also led to the formation of a lake where water continued to collect and rise.
On Friday, the lake's reservoir had topped 2.5 million cubic metres of water, up from the estimated 1.5-2 million cubic metres recorded a day earlier, before overflowing into the Bhotekoshi River, authorities and witnesses in Nepal said.
“We have received a notice saying that the lake has broken its banks," Narendra Pariyar, the most senior bureaucrat in Nepal's flood-hit Rasuwa district, told Reuters. "But we do not know how big it is and how high is its water level. We can see that the level of water in the river is rising.”
People ran to higher ground carrying belongings as announcements were made warning them to stay away from the river and police personnel remained on standby with ropes and stretchers, Reuters witnesses said.
"Everyone started saying 'run', so I ran. The siren in Bidur (town) also went off. I was very scared," Shanti Tamang, 40, told Reuters.
Rescue workers were also asked to move to safer places along with their equipment.
MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO SEARCH FOR MISSING, XI SAYS
The risk of the lake bursting prompted all Chinese rescue personnel and vehicles to withdraw and stand by in a safe area, state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday. Authorities in Nepal stopped rescue operations for 90 minutes but resumed later, an army officer said.
Wednesday's flood ripped through villages and valleys, destroying power stations, roads and bridges along a route that links Kathmandu with Lhasa in Tibet and is popular with trekkers and pilgrims. Of those missing, at least 540 are foreigners, many of them Hindu pilgrims from India headed to the holy Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar in Tibet.
In Beijing, China's Politburo met on Friday to direct rescue work, state media reported.
Authorities must "scientifically formulate search-and-rescue plans, make every effort to search for missing people from China and abroad," the meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping said, according to state news agency Xinhua.
The meeting said rescue work faced "extremely difficult challenges" and called for stronger monitoring of glacier lakes, landslide risks and barrier lakes, emergency aid to affected areas in Nepal, and closer international disaster cooperation.
Earlier, Nepalese rescue teams used helicopters to search for survivors and drop emergency supplies to thousands cut off in towns and valleys, while emergency services – some using sniffer dogs – recovered dozens of bodies swept down into the plains.
Dibga Tamang was among the last people rescued from Rasuwa on Thursday, airlifted along with three others to an army camp in Nuwakot.
"All of our people have gone. They are dead," Tamang said. "I have no one left waiting for me. Everything and everyone is gone. The end."
NEPAL DECLINES FOREIGN RESCUE HELP
While offers of assistance are pouring in, Nepal said it does not need help from other nations in search and rescue missions.
"The offer for help is natural. Our security agencies are doing the search and rescue operation. For now we don’t require such help,” Lok Bahadur Chhetri, spokesperson for the foreign ministry said on Friday.
A South Korean rapid response team is already in Kathmandu but has not been deployed because the Nepali government does not have a plan to accept foreign rescue yet, according to the foreign ministry in Seoul.
The Kathmandu Post reported that India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had asked the government to allow their search-and-rescue teams to assist in the operation.
Chinese rescuers had yet to reach the worst-hit area on the Chinese side of the border, the Gyirong border crossing, by Thursday evening, state media reports indicated, as crews worked to clear debris from the key access road leading to the area.
Dramatic footage on Wednesday showed enormous torrents of muddy water and debris tearing through structures in the border crossing area within seconds and engulfing people trying to flee.
The tally of missing in Tibet's Gyirong County was 558, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday, including 260 foreign nationals. So far, just five people have been confirmed dead on the Chinese side.
China's Premier Li Qiang, the country's No. 2 official, arrived at the disaster-stricken site in Gyirong on Thursday afternoon, state-run Xinhua news agency said. The visit suggested Beijing was treating the disaster as a matter of the highest national priority.
BUILDINGS 'WIPED OUT LIKE TOOTHPICKS'
Around the world, relatives of those missing were desperate for information about their whereabouts.
Sneha Sudhir was one of 10 women whose husbands had set out from Nepal on a trek to Tibet's Mount Kailash when the region was struck by disaster.
The men, all from northern Virginia, are among dozens of Americans missing.
"Where are they?" Sudhir said tearfully from her home in Chantilly, Virginia, on Thursday.
Sudhir said the women were supporting each other and reaching out to officials, politicians and friends and family in the United States and India, hoping for word.
"Everybody is taking turns in shedding their tears, wiping it off and getting back to work," she said.
President Donald Trump said the U.S. had offered support to Nepal.
"Nobody's ever seen anything quite like that, where very powerful, strong, well-built buildings were wiped out like they were toothpicks. It's a terrible thing. We are sending aid and we've spoken to the leadership and we let them know anything they want, they'll have."
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma, Sahana Bajracharya, Aftab Ahmed, Saurabh Sharma, Liz Lee, Yukun Zhang, Xiuhao Chen, Shi Bu, Sakshi Dayal, Kanjyik Ghosh, Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Hritam Mukherjee, Ashley Tang and Christine Chen; Writing by Lincoln Feast and YP Rajesh; Editing by Stephen Coates and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
