At a Tibet border crossing gone to rubble, hundreds remain missing
GYIRONG PORT, Tibet — A rock-strewn gully is all that remains of Gyirong Port, a Himalayan border crossing that once carried a steady stream of people and goods between China and Nepal.
For years, this place handled hundreds of travelers a day, a busy transit point for tourists and traders moving to and from Nepal’s Rasuwa crossing just across the river. There were travel agencies, shops, a supermarket and a bridge linking the two countries. Now there is none of that. The five-story checkpoint that once towered over the valley in the grand style of Chinese government buildings is gone, reduced to traces of its foundation. In its place, rescue crews picked their way across stones, gravel and wet, unstable mud.
The CNN team reached the site Sunday on a government-organized visit to a zone that is still dangerous. Hard hats and boots were required, and officials kept an eye on the hillsides for further landslides. Heavy dust and fog filled the air. Excavators and rescue vehicles moved through what was left of the port as workers continued a search that has stretched on since Aug. 26, when a wall of water slammed into Gyirong, flattening the post before roaring into Nepal.
Surveillance footage from that morning shows people running in the moments before the deluge hit. The trigger was a glacier that cracked and broke off on Nepal’s Langtang Lirung mountain, sending a mass of rock and ice crashing into the valley. What followed was a landslide and explosive flash flooding that overwhelmed the crossing, an event so sudden and violent that most people in the area had little chance to escape.
Eleven days later, no one has been pulled alive from the port’s ruins. The site has become a focus for families in China and in other countries who say their relatives were there that morning and have not been heard from since. For them, the wait has been complicated by a lack of public information.
Chinese authorities have not released the names of people believed to have been at the port or missing on the Chinese side. Local officials in Tibet said earlier in the week that more than 250 foreigners were among those unaccounted for. The most recent official update from Beijing put the number of confirmed dead on the Chinese side at 31, with 531 missing. Across both countries, authorities say more than 1,000 people have been confirmed dead and thousands remain unaccounted for.
The gap in information has led to growing questions among families desperate for news, and to broader questions about transparency. Beijing has defended its release of information from the remote disaster zone as open and timely. Sunday’s visit, arranged by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Council Information Office, allowed about a dozen reporters from international outlets to see the rescue effort firsthand. CNN joined the itinerary planned by officials to reach the restricted area, but maintained full editorial control.
Reaching the site helps clarify why the response has been so difficult. The CNN team drove about eight hours from Lhasa, the Tibetan regional capital, to Dingri on Saturday, at altitudes above 13,000 feet, then continued for another six hours to Gyirong, which sits at roughly 6,000 feet. The road down toward the port is a narrow, double-lane ribbon of hairpin turns wrapped around forested mountains.
That road was not cleared for heavy vehicles until Sept. 2, seven days after the disaster, when rescue workers finally pushed through with heavy machinery. Before that, smaller teams reached the valley on foot, by boat and by air.
Search operations over the past 11 days have also been interrupted by the threat of secondary landslides and new “barrier lakes” formed where mud and rock have dammed stretches of the river. Heavy rains and mountainous terrain have at times made even helicopter access difficult. Authorities have warned that the glacier on Langtang Lirung remains unstable and could generate more debris.
The catastrophe could push China and Nepal to cooperate more closely on monitoring shared mountain hazards and to strengthen early-warning systems, particularly as climate change makes glacial disasters in the Himalaya more frequent and less predictable. But for now, the focus remains on recovery — and for families waiting for news, on a list of names that has not yet come.