At flood-destroyed China-Nepal border, no sign of a once-busy port – Reuters witnesses

GYIRONG, China, Sept 6 (Reuters) – About 20 Chinese rescue workers in bright orange worked excavators, shovels and radar detectors on Sunday in an effort to find hundreds of people missing since a tsunami-like mudslide wiped out China’s main border crossing with Nepal.

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The Gyirong border crossing separating China’s Tibet and Nepal became a grisly emblem of the devastation that followed the collapse of a glacier on the Nepal side of the border on August 26.

Reuters and other news agencies visited the land port, which sits in a narrow river gorge, on Sunday in a trip organized by China’s foreign ministry.

There was no trace of the five-storey Chinese customs building that had stood at the border before the disaster, video and pictures from the scene showed. The only structure still visible from before the mudslide was a portion of a nearby water tower installation.

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Workers had placed a Chinese flag at the spot where the border gate, at nearly 20-meters-tall, once stood.

Behind hazard signs that read “Danger Area Pass Quickly”, three groups of about 20 rescue and recovery workers dug the earth using shovels while several excavators stood by on Sunday afternoon.

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(Writing by Mei Mei Chu and Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Saad Sayeed)

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

This story was originally published September 6, 2026 at 3:30 AM.