AMY GOODMAN: In Nepal, more than 900 people have been confirmed dead after a massive wall of water, mud and debris crashed through a Himalayan river valley on the border with Tibet. More than 4,700 people are missing. Rescue efforts are also underway for more than 900 hydropower workers believed to be trapped in more than a dozen underground tunnels blocked by debris. Families are searching hospitals for the missing, and crews have buried hundreds of unidentified bodies in shallow graves. This is a Nepali man searching for missing family members.

MARICHMAN TAMAN: [translated] Everyone is hoping to find relatives. The army camp is crowded, and we need to wait for some time. There is hope, but bodies may be lying in nearby fields or farmland. But their families, like us, are hopeful. I left my work in Kathmandu to come here and look for our missing relatives.

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, the World Health Organization, WHO, partnered with the Nepal Army to rush essential supplies to flood-affected parts of central Nepal. This is WHO team lead in Nepal, Dr. Balwinder Singh Chawla, describing the scale of the destruction.

DR. BALWINDER SINGH CHAWLA: There are families that have been washed away. The health facilities have been washed away. And people are in dire need of support. WHO has been trying to assess the needs and respond to the government of Nepal with whatever best we can at this moment. We have been supporting with our IEHK kits. We’ve been supporting with tents. We’re supporting with other supplies as required, and there are other supplies that are coming from Kathmandu to this place.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Kathmandu, Nepal, where we’re joined by Kunda Dixit. He’s a former editor and current publisher of Nepali Times. His most recent piece is headlined “Nepal avalanche was live on drone camera.” Dixit is author of Dateline Earth: Journalism as If the Planet Mattered and also A People War trilogy of the Nepal conflict. He’s also a media educator and chair of the Center for Investigative Journalism Nepal.

Kunda Dixit, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s an honor to have you with us. Our condolences over the horror of what has taken place, well over 5,000 people dead or missing at this point. The numbers may be going up. Still, people are being searched for, especially in these hydroelectric hydropower tunnels. Can you talk about what’s happening on the ground?

KUNDA DIXIT: Well, on the ground, I think we’re just picking up the pieces now. Hope is fading for most of those who are missing. These are — this runs into thousands, mainly because many of them are buried under, you know, 100, 200 meters of debris, or bodies are being washed up in — all the way down in India, 250 kilometers downstream. So, this is a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. I, in my career, have never seen anything like it, and we have covered other glacial lake bursts in the Himalaya before.

You know, because there is so little news of bodies, their relatives are really distraught, as you showed here earlier, and they’re, you know, thronging to hospital morgues. The morgues are full, so their bodies are being buried after DNA identification, so that they can be brought up later for cremation. But actually, the strange thing is there are very few bodies compared to the — you know, the numbers who are missing. So, it’s a terrible situation. It’s a huge human tragedy. But it’s also an economic loss for the country, much worse, in fact, than the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, which killed 9,000 people.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the fact — I mean, people refer to an act of God. We’re talking about a glacier, something you have written about extensively, and the effects of climate change on your community, on the country of Nepal, on Tibet, and what this means when you are right next to the largest greenhouse gas emitter, China — and, of course, I’m speaking to you from the historically largest greenhouse gas emitter, the United States — and what this means for a country like Nepal, not responsible — 

KUNDA DIXIT: Yeah, well —

AMY GOODMAN: — to say the least, for climate change.

KUNDA DIXIT: Yeah, yeah. We are now — we are next to India and China, who are the biggest emitters together. But in per capita terms, they’re not as high as industrialized countries, even now. And China is taking great leaps in renewable energy. So is India, going that way.

So, this is historical. The build-up of greenhouse gases has led to this. We used to say that the glaciers are melting in the Himalaya. Now it seems like the mountains are cracking up. And this seems to be the case in this event, which happened on a mountain in Nepal near the Chinese border, where mountains that are already fragile because of seismic activity are now losing the permafrost ice that used to be inside the cracks in the rocks, which have now melted because of global warming, and then the mountains are literally crumbling. And what happened this time, it seems, is that the rocks, the bedrock underneath the glacier, gave way. So, it came down with the rocks, and the ice on top of it, into the valley below, into a river, that then flowed into Nepal. So, this has sort of redefined what global warming and climate change is doing, not just to Nepal and the Himalaya, but to the planet.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what the Red Cross is saying right now, I mean, the number of people — we don’t know the numbers at this point — and particularly the hydropower tunnels and what is happening?

KUNDA DIXIT: Yeah, this was — this happened on a river called the Trishuli, which actually starts in Tibet and flows into Nepal, and it is a major economic corridor. It is for tourism. A lot of trekkers and mountaineers go through this valley to go climb mountains and hike in them. It’s an extremely scenic area. It’s very beautiful. It’s also the economic corridor to China, Nepal’s second-largest trading partner. Most of our trade goes through a border checkpoint, which now no longer exists, from Nepal into China. The highway leading to that checkpoint has been swept away.

And it’s also a conduit for pilgrims going up to holy lakes up in the mountains in Nepal, as well as in Tibet. And this Friday was actually the — the full moon day was one of the holiest days of the year for pilgrimage, so the valley was full of tourists and pilgrims and travelers and traders, trucks and buses. So, that’s why the death toll among the visitors was so high. But we can’t even imagine — I mean, no one has even calculated precisely the death toll among Nepali people in the settlements and the towns and the villages that were completely wiped off the map.

AMY GOODMAN: This is exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama speaking on Sunday.

DALAI LAMA: [translated] The recent flash floods in the Nepal-Tibet border region, particularly in the Kyirong on the Tibetan side and in the Rasuwa area of Nepal, have caused great loss of life, suffering and destruction. For the benefit of the deceased, those missing, we will pray to Avalokiteśvara and recite the six-syllable mantra. May these prayers help and benefit all those affected by this tragedy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Kunda Dixit, about what is needed from the international community at this point?

KUNDA DIXIT: Well, I think at the point immediately, we needed that specialized digging equipment to reach those tunnels of the hydropower plants that you mentioned. There are about 900 workers and engineers who are stuck inside. Some of them have been now approached, but they found no survivors inside and no sign of life. The others are in remote areas, and even the entrances have now been completely plugged by the sediment that came down the river.

I think, in the longer term, this is going to take years, if not a decade, to rehabilitate and find jobs and find economic activity, find homes for people who have been displaced downstream. And this is going to run into hundreds of thousands of people who will be affected indirectly. It might actually spur more outmigration to cities and abroad, people leaving just to take care of their families and to rebuild.

The government is now — we have a new government in the last — it’s just been in power for six months, after the Gen Z uprising exactly a year ago. And they have some amazingly talented technocrats with international exposure. And I’m sure that, you know, they understand the gravity of the situation and are approaching multilateral donors, as well as countries abroad, for specialized help, as well as long-term assistance for development and to get the economic activity going again.

AMY GOODMAN: And you face the possibility, in this last 30 seconds, of another flood, Kunda?

KUNDA DIXIT: Yeah, it’s raining heavily outside. I’m looking outside my window towards the north, where the valley is. And I see on the weather radar that the area that — where the flood originated, behind Langtang Mountain, is now under a very heavy thunderstorm and snowfall. So, we’re not out of these woods yet.

AMY GOODMAN: Kunda Dixit, former editor and current publisher of Nepali Times, most recent piece is headlined “Nepal avalanche was live on drone camera,” author of Dateline Earth: Journalism as If the Planet Mattered and A People War trilogy of the Nepal conflict.

Coming up, The Washington Post revealed several U.S. military leaders have advised the defense secretary against extending the war in Iran. We’ll speak with William Hartung, author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Small Things” by Kassi Valazza, performing at the Brooklyn Folk Festival.