Emergency help in Nepal

Every number on this page was read off an official government source on the date below, and the source is named beside it. If you are in danger now, do not read the page — call one of the four numbers in the box and tell them where you are.

These four reach an operator from any phone in Nepal, on any network, with no area code and no balance. They are the ones to use when you do not know who else to call. Say where you are before you say anything else — a call that drops after you have given the location still gets someone moving.

Last checked by Imperial College of Engineering. Every number here was read off a Nepal Police, ministry, army or embassy page on that date. Numbers do change; if one fails, dial 100 and ask them to route you.

What happened on the Trishuli

On the morning of 26 August 2026 (10 Bhadra 2083), shortly after 8:30 in the morning, a glacier collapse on the Nepal–China border, north of Langtang Lirung, which sent debris down the Lhende Khola into the Bhote Koshi and then the Trishuli. There was no monsoon behind it and almost no warning: the wave covered its first stretch at roughly 193 kilometres an hour, and it destroyed settlements along 72 kilometres of river. Nepal’s flood gauges in that reach are built for a river that rises over hours. This one arrived in minutes.

Confirmed dead
389
Still missing
910
Injured
466
Bridges gone
41

Figures for Nepal as of 2026-08-28, and they are moving. The first bulletin on 26 August reported 72 dead; it was 95 by that evening. Separate figures are reported across the border in Tibet. Treat every number here as the last one we could check, not as a final count.

The people inside the power stations

The Trishuli is a hydropower river, so the wave went through six working power stations in the middle of a Wednesday shift. More than 133 employees and workers across those projects are missing. They were civil, electrical and electronics engineers, technicians and construction crews — this college’s own profession, and most of them will have trained in colleges like this one. We are an engineering college and we are not going to write about this flood without saying so.

  • Trishuli 3A

    45 employees and workers were on maintenance at the powerhouse when it was hit.

  • Langtang Khola

    Around 60 workers were inside a tunnel. The powerhouse was swept away days before the project was due to start generating.

  • Chilime

    Six people in the plant area and one near the residential quarters are out of contact.

  • Rasuwagadhi

    Staff are unaccounted for after the plant and the customs yard beside it were destroyed. Over 300 vehicles went with them.

431 megawatts left the national grid with them. If you are a family member of someone who was on one of these sites, the project operators are reporting to the district authorities, and the missing-person route below is the same one everybody else is using — use it as well, not instead.

The worst-hit districts are Rasuwa and Nuwakot, with damage continuing downstream through Dhading, Gorkha, Chitwan. The government has declared 3 days of national mourning and has declared the affected local levels a disaster zone for 3 months. Treatment for anyone injured in this flood has been ordered free at government hospitals, through the Ministry of Health, the Army and the public hospital system.

If you are looking for someone

Missing-person reports for this disaster are taken at district police offices, and they are collated centrally from there. Go to the district office where the person was last known to be, not the one where you live — that is the office holding the recovery records for that stretch of river. If you cannot travel, call the province office in the list below and ask them to take it by phone.

Have these ready before you call, because the officer will ask for all of them:

  • Full name as written on the citizenship or passport, and age.
  • The last place they were known to be, and the last time anyone spoke to them.
  • What they were wearing, and any vehicle, plate number or bus they were travelling on.
  • A recent photograph, and any identifying mark.
  • Your own number, and a second number that will be answered if yours cannot be.

Give the same details to the Nepal Police control line on 100 as well. The two records are kept separately and a name in only one of them is a name that can be missed.

National desks and disaster control

Use these when a whole settlement is cut off rather than one person, when a district office is not answering, or when you need a decision that a local office cannot make. The toll-free numbers work from a phone with no credit on it.

  • Ministry of Home Affairs control room

    Toll free

    गृह मन्त्रालय नियन्त्रण कक्ष

    1112

    Also+977-1-4211208+977-1-4211214

    [email protected]

    The national disaster control room, toll free on 1112. This is the government desk that coordinates rescue across districts, and the right number when a whole settlement is cut off rather than one person.

  • Health Emergency Operation Centre

    Toll free

    स्वास्थ्य आपत्कालीन कार्य सञ्चालन केन्द्र

    1115

    Ministry of Health and Population, toll free. Health advice, where to take an injured person, and which hospital in an area is taking patients. The government has ordered free treatment for people injured in this flood — say so when you call.

  • Nepal Police Headquarters, Naxal

    प्रहरी प्रधान कार्यालय

    1113

    Use 100 first. This is the headquarters line for when a district office is not answering and you need someone above it.

  • Armed Police Force Headquarters, Halchok

    सशस्त्र प्रहरी बल

    1114

    The APF runs disaster rescue alongside the Army and the Police.

  • Nepali Army — Directorate of Disaster Management

    नेपाली सेना, विपद् व्यवस्थापन निर्देशनालय

    +977-9863028539

    Also01-5979364

    [email protected]

    The mobile is the duty officer, staffed around the clock. The Army is flying the helicopter rescue in Rasuwa and Nuwakot; this is the directorate that tasks it.

Where to call in your province

Each province police office below is the one that coordinates the district offices under it. The link on every card opens that province’s own Nepal Police helpline page, which lists its district offices — those numbers are mostly personal mobiles that move with the officer, so we send you to the source rather than serve you a copy that has quietly gone stale. Police control on 100 reaches all of them.

Kathmandu Valley district offices

Listed separately because the college is in Bhaktapur and most people reading this page are either in the Valley or trying to reach it. These are the three district police offices, published by Nepal Police for Bagmati Province.

Helplines for a particular situation

A disaster does not fall on everyone the same way. These desks exist because the person who needs them is usually not the person who needs disaster control, and in a relief camp they are frequently the first number that should have been called.

  • National Women Commission — Khabar Garau

    Toll free

    खबर गरौँ

    1145

    Also01-425670101-4250246

    Toll free, 24 hours, for women and girls: violence, trafficking, an unsafe shelter, or being separated from a family in a relief camp.

  • Child Helpline Nepal (CWIN)

    Toll free

    बाल हेल्पलाइन

    1098

    Toll free, for a child who is missing, unaccompanied, or at risk.

  • Tourist Police

    पर्यटक प्रहरी

    1144

    Also01-422635901-4226403

    For foreign visitors, and for Nepali families whose relative was trekking or driving in the affected corridor.

  • Nepal Red Cross Central Blood Bank, Soaltee Mode

    केन्द्रीय रक्त संचार सेवा

    01-5006465

    Open 24 hours. Regional transfusion centres run in Biratnagar, Pokhara, Nepalgunj and Chitwan; ask this number which one is nearest you.

  • Hello Sarkar

    Toll free

    हेलो सरकार

    1111

    The Prime Minister's Office grievance line. Not a rescue number — the one to use when a government office is refusing to act and you need that on record.

Calling from outside Nepal

The short codes above are reachable only from inside the country. From abroad, dial the full numbers with the +977 country code, or use the mission numbers below. A large share of the people unaccounted for on this river are foreign nationals, and their embassies are being given the recovery lists directly.

If your country has no mission listed here, contact your own foreign ministry and ask them to raise it with their mission in Kathmandu, and give the same details to the Tourist Police on 1144. Nepal’s tourism board is keeping a separate register of missing visitors and it is fed from those two routes.

How to help, and the rule most people are breaking

Relief for this disaster is being run under a one-door policy. Private organisations, groups and individuals may not independently collect money or materials for it, and unauthorised collections — including the ones being organised on social media right now — are illegal. The reason is not bureaucratic: uncoordinated collections in past disasters put lorries of the wrong goods on the only open road while the right ones waited behind them.

So the college is not opening a fund and is not taking collections, and neither should you. Money goes to the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund:

Goods, rather than money, go to one of three collection points. Call the focal person before you load anything, and ask what is actually needed that day — the answer changes, and the wrong pallet occupies a road.

  • Relief arriving from outside Nepal

    National Emergency Operation Centre warehouse, Tribhuvan International Airport

    +977-9841879222

    Shraddha Bhattarai

  • Relief for Nuwakot

    Nepali Army, Maithali Barracks, Battar

    +977-9851234324

    Aabishkar

  • Relief for Dhading

    Nepali Army, Baireni Barracks

    +977-9851154226

    Dilip Ghale

Blood is the one thing an individual can give directly and immediately. The Red Cross central blood bank number is in the list above, and it will tell you which centre near you is short.

Roads, and whether you can travel

The flood took out 41 bridges and about 42 kilometres of road, and it knocked 431 megawatts of hydropower off the grid, so expect power cuts as well as closures. Check 103 before you set out. This is what was closed when this page was last checked:

  • Prithvi Highway

    Blocked in both directions at several points in Dhading

    Debris from the flood is being cleared at Jwangkhola, Bihani Pump and Baireni. This is the Kathmandu–Muglin–Narayangadh road: if you are travelling to the Valley from Pokhara, Chitwan, Butwal or anywhere further west, this is your road.

  • Araniko Highway

    Blocked by landslide at Jurikhola and Kodari, Sindhupalchok

    The route toward the northern border.

  • Pasang Lhamu Highway (Galchhi–Syaphrubesi)

    Closed

    The Rasuwa road, through the reach the flood destroyed.

  • Muglin–Narayangadh

    Traffic halted along the Trishuli on flood risk

    Check before you set out; it has been opening and closing.

If you are our student or applicant

Call the college on 01-5091616 if this has reached your family. Whatever it is — a funeral, a missing relative, a house gone, a road you cannot cross — tell us before you worry about a deadline, and we will work around it.

There is one deadline we cannot move, and you should know how it falls. The second IOE merit list publishes on 30 August, 10:00 am, and admission from it closes at 2 September, 3:00 pm. That hour is set centrally by the Institute of Engineering, not by us: a seat not taken by then goes back into the pool for the third list. The Prithvi Highway is the road most applicants from west of the Valley travel on, and it is cut.

You do not have to be standing at our counter to take the seat. Our online admission desk completes the whole thing from a phone — you sign in with the IOE roll number you already have, and it works on a slow connection. Bring your original documents to campus whenever the roads let you. If you would rather have a person do it with you, call the number above and we will walk through it on the phone.

भावपूर्ण श्रद्धाञ्जलीEveryone at Imperial College of Engineering grieves with the families of Rasuwa and Nuwakot, and with everyone still waiting for news from that river. If this page is missing a number that would have helped you, tell us at [email protected] and we will check it and add it.