On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, at approximately 8.44 a.m. Nepal time, what initially appeared to be a 4.4-magnitude earthquake struck near the Nepal-China border. It triggered the collapse of an enormous glacial slab, which plunged a kilometre below to the valley floor, resulting in devastating flash floods. The United States Geological Survey later confirmed that the seismic activity was, in fact, the glacial collapse itself and the landslide (later registered as equivalent to an earthquake measuring 5.2) rather than by tectonic shifts. Preliminary estimates suggest that 579 people have perished in Nepal, with nearly 2,000 people missing, many of them believed to be foreigners.

Entire villages and towns that this writer has previously travelled through have been swept away. Vital infrastructure, such as bridges and hydropower stations, has been completely decimated. A staggering 475 megawatts of generating capacity has been wiped off Nepal’s electricity grid. This may go down as the most devastating natural disaster Nepal has ever witnessed.

Nature’s fury knows no borders

For Nepal and its two neighbours, India and China, which ordinarily see themselves caught up in geopolitical contestations in the country, the catastrophic force of Mother Nature is a reminder that the political dimensions of geography are relevant only insofar as nature does not intervene, unexpectedly and destructively. The natural world does not recognise political boundaries in the same way that the custodians of nation-states do. China and India both suffered substantial losses from Wednesday’s floods. Human and property losses continue to mount in all three countries, including Nepal.

China’s Gyirong Port, the largest land trade port in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the primary gateway between Nepal and China, was designated an international-standard land port. An upgrade in August 2017 led to its transformation, upgrading it from a bilateral crossing to a fully recognised international gateway.

Built at a cost of $175.8 million, the port and the services it provided are now effectively buried beneath heavy sediment and debris.

Access roads on the Chinese side leading to the Nepal border, as well as power supplies and local communication links, have been completely severed or severely damaged. There are reports of fatalities on the Chinese side — a number that is almost certain to rise. There are also reports of people missing in Tibet’s Gyirong County, including foreign nationals.

Editorial | Danger from above: On the Nepal flood

The loss of human life for India is tragic, with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) confirming that Indian nationals are missing or untraced. Most of them were tourists-cum-pilgrims headed to the abode of Lord Shiva at Kailash Mansarovar. This is a route this writer has travelled on more than a few occasions. The pilgrims would have driven from Kathmandu through the lush, rocky and distinctly narrow river valley to reach Gyirong Port, before proceeding further upwards to the majestic Tibetan Plateau.

Flood fallout for India

For India, the downstream flood threats to its States have been severe, although the immediate threat from some of these events may have passed. Floodwaters reached the Gandak, Kosi and Ganga rivers in Bihar, prompting authorities in Patna to go on maximum alert and deploy large teams, particularly to the Valmikinagar Barrage and along vulnerable embankments, to monitor alarmingly high water levels. Riverside communities were evacuated to safer locations. Authorities in Uttar Pradesh also went on alert, with the State’s Relief Commissioner tracking developments in real time, as overflowing rivers from Nepal naturally flow into Indian territory.

Border districts such as Maharajganj and Kushinagar stepped up emergency surveillance and deployed emergency personnel. India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) deployed teams across the Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border area. New Delhi also activated an extensive Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief programme. The Indian Air Force dispatched more than 47.5 tonnes of emergency relief material to Nepal, including medical supplies, rations and tents.

A case for cooperation

All of this underscores how severely this calamitous event has affected all three countries — Nepal, India and China. The question that arises, therefore, is how to transcend some of the parochial features of geopolitics, while by no means ignoring the compulsions of realpolitik, and create a feasible framework for collaboration and coordination.

There is little doubt that Nepal, India and China will need to effectively address increasingly unpredictable cross-border natural phenomena such as the one we have just witnessed. There is equally little doubt that such events are likely to recur in the future.

The past few days have underscored the need to find ways to compartmentalise the harder political dynamics of the China-India-Nepal relationship and create space for cooperation when confronted with events that remind us of the fickleness of nature, the fragility of human life, and the physical interconnections that inextricably link the three countries.

Bhaskar Koirala is a Nepali scholar based in New Delhi and the founder of the Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies, which launched the first Nepal-India-China Trilateral Track II Dialogue in 2014

Published – August 29, 2026 12:08 am IST

Photo: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

New York:

New York City was shaken by a small earthquake on Friday with a 4.8 magnitude and an epicenter in neighboring New Jersey state, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). 

There were no initial reports of injuries or damage.

Notable quake, preliminary info: M 4.8 – 7 km N of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey https://t.co/DuTYZ1kb4X

— USGS Earthquakes (@USGS_Quakes) April 5, 2024

In Brooklyn buildings shook, rattling cupboard doors and fixtures, an AFP correspondent reported.

At the United Nations, which has its headquarters in New York, a Security Council meeting on the situation in Gaza was temporarily paused after the tremor.

“Is that an earthquake?” said Save the Children representative Janti Soeripto who was speaking at the time.

Social media users reported feeling the earthquake from Philadelphia up to New York and eastward along Long Island.   

The iconic Empire State Building reported on its X account: “I AM FINE.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New York City is collapsing beneath the weight of its own city and among the first areas to be affected by such a tragedy are LaGuardia Airport, Arthur Ashe Stadium and Coney Island, according to a recent NASA report. The five boroughs of New York City are sinking more quickly than the city as a whole, which is sinking at a rate of 1.6 millimetres annually, according to research conducted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Rutgers University.

According to research published in Science Advances, from 2016 to 2023, the US Open Venue- Arthur Ashe Stadium and runways at LaGuardia airport saw the most sinking, lowering at rates of 3.7 and 4.6 millimetres per year, respectively. These two locations may have sunk the fastest since they were both constructed over previous landfills.

Further, the threat presented by the city’s sinking is being worsened by increasing sea levels. Hurricanes and extratropical storms have caused coastal flooding in the city, among other problems. One of the examples is Superstorm Sandy of 2012 which devastated the city.

“Protecting coastal populations and assets from coastal flooding is an ongoing challenge for New York City. The combined effect of natural sea level variations and destructive storms is being increasingly exacerbated by ongoing sea level rise,” the researchers wrote in the report.

NASA research also added that Interstate 78, which passes through the Holland Tunnel that connects Manhattan to New Jersey, is also sinking at nearly double the rate of the rest of the city. The southern half of Governors Island, Midland and South Beach in Staten Island and Arverne by the Sea, a coastal neighbourhood in southern Queens are also sinking faster.

The report was released after the United States Geological Survey discovered earlier this year that the New York metropolis’s more than 1 million buildings weigh close to 1.7 trillion pounds and that the city was gradually collapsing under its own weight. The report stated that the city was sinking at the rate of 1-2 millilitres per year. The researchers arrived at the result by comparing the geology beneath the city to satellite data showing its footprint.

“New York faces significant challenges from flood hazard; the threat of sea level rise is 3 to 4 times higher than the global average along the Atlantic coast of North America… A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City,” lead researcher and geologist Tom Parsons of the United States Geological Survey wrote in the report in May.

The team of researchers calculated the cumulative mass of the more than 1 million buildings in New York City, which worked out to be 764,000,000,000 kilograms or 1.68 trillion pounds. They divided the city into a grid of 100-by-100-metre squares and converted building mass to downward pressure by factoring in gravity’s pull. Increased urbanisation, including the draining and pumping of groundwater, could only add to New York’s subsidence problem, the researchers warned earlier.