Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Very big floods hit Nepal and part of China. A lot of rain fell. Rivers became very strong and very fast.
More than 1,000 people are dead. About 3,900 people are missing. Their families are still waiting for news.
Rescue teams are looking for people. Many workers were building power stations near the rivers. People think these workers are under the mud.
Aid groups are sending clean water and food. Many small children and mothers need help right now.
- flood
- a large amount of water that covers land that is usually dry
- river
- a long line of water that flows to the sea
- missing
- not found, and nobody knows where the person is
- rescue
- to save someone from danger
- mud
- soft, wet earth
- worker
- a person who does a job
- aid
- help given to people in trouble
- clean water
- water that is safe to drink
Level 2 — Elementary
The number of people killed by floods along the border between Nepal and China has now passed 1,000. Nepal's disaster authority says more than 1,000 people died there, and around 3,900 are still missing.
Hundreds of the missing are foreign nationals who were travelling or working in the region. In China's Tibet Autonomous Region, 16 people were killed and more than 500 have not been found.
Rescue workers are digging at hydropower construction sites. These sites sit in narrow valleys next to fast rivers, and hundreds of construction workers were there when the water arrived.
The Red Cross says about 93,000 people have been affected. The United Nations says roughly 65,000 people urgently need clean water and sanitation supplies to stop disease from spreading.
- death toll
- the number of people killed in an event
- border
- the line that separates two countries
- disaster authority
- a government body that manages emergencies
- foreign national
- a person who is a citizen of another country
- hydropower
- electricity made from moving water
- valley
- low land between hills or mountains
- sanitation
- systems for keeping places clean and safe from disease
- affected
- changed or harmed by an event
Level 3 — Intermediate
The catastrophic flooding that struck the Nepal-China border region in late August has now killed more than 1,000 people, according to Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, which also lists roughly 3,900 people as missing. Several hundred of the missing are foreign nationals, a reflection of how many trekkers, traders and contract workers pass through these valleys at the end of the monsoon season.
Across the border in China's Tibet Autonomous Region, authorities have confirmed 16 deaths and say more than 500 people remain unaccounted for. Satellite imagery released in the days after the disaster shows river channels that widened dramatically, burying roads and settlements that had stood for decades under gravel and silt.
Attention has shifted to hydropower construction sites, where hundreds of labourers were housed in camps directly beside the rivers being dammed. Search teams face a grim arithmetic: the deeper the debris, the smaller the chance of finding survivors, yet families are refusing to accept that the search should be scaled back.
The humanitarian picture is widening. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimates that about 93,000 people have been affected, while United Nations agencies say around 65,000 urgently require water and sanitation supplies. Officials warn that contaminated water in crowded shelters could turn a flood emergency into a public health one.
- catastrophic
- causing sudden and very great damage or suffering
- unaccounted for
- not found or explained; still missing
- monsoon
- a season of very heavy rain in South and Southeast Asia
- silt
- fine sand and mud carried and left behind by moving water
- labourer
- a worker who does hard physical work, often on building sites
- debris
- broken material left after destruction
- humanitarian
- concerned with reducing human suffering
- contaminated
- made dirty or unsafe by harmful substances
Level 4 — Advanced
The floods that tore through the Nepal-China frontier in the closing days of August have produced a death toll that few in the region anticipated, surpassing 1,000 as Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority revised its count upward and placed roughly 3,900 people on its missing register. Several hundred of those unaccounted for are foreign nationals, a demographic signature of high-altitude valleys that function simultaneously as trekking corridors, cross-border trade routes and labour markets for large infrastructure projects.
China's Tibet Autonomous Region has confirmed a far smaller number of confirmed deaths, sixteen, alongside more than five hundred missing, a disparity that speaks less to the severity of the water than to the difficulty of recovering bodies from valleys where entire alluvial terraces were rearranged. Satellite comparisons taken before and after the event show river channels that broadened by orders of magnitude, entombing roads, bridges and settlements beneath fresh deposits of gravel.
The recovery effort has converged on hydropower construction sites, and the reason is structural rather than coincidental. Run-of-river hydropower requires camps, adits and diversion works to be sited at the valley floor, precisely where a debris-laden flood pulse concentrates its energy. Hundreds of contract labourers were quartered in exactly those positions, and the search now proceeds under a bleak calculus in which every additional metre of overburden diminishes the probability of a live rescue.
Beyond the immediate arithmetic of the dead and missing lies a humanitarian emergency of considerable scale. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies puts the affected population at around 93,000, while United Nations assessments identify some 65,000 people in acute need of water, sanitation and hygiene provision, along with thousands of young children requiring treatment for severe wasting. Relief coordinators are candid that the epidemiological risk in improvised shelters may ultimately claim lives that the water itself did not.
- frontier
- a border region between two countries
- demographic signature
- a pattern that reveals the make-up of a population
- disparity
- a noticeable and often unfair difference
- alluvial
- made of sand, silt and gravel deposited by flowing water
- adit
- a horizontal entrance tunnel into a hillside or mine
- overburden
- the layer of material lying above what searchers are trying to reach
- epidemiological
- relating to the spread and control of disease in populations
- wasting
- severe weight loss caused by malnutrition or illness
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