More than 50 members of Minnesota’s Nepali and Tibetan communities held a vigil Tuesday night at the State Capitol, to raise awareness over the impact of last week’s devastating floods, which killed more than 1,100 people.
“Let’s stand together for Nepal and let’s continue to pray for healing, resilience and protection for all those still in harm’s way,” said Bijay Shrestha, president of the Association of Nepalis in Minnesota (ANMN).
The flash floods hit on the morning of Aug. 26. Within hours, videos emerged of floodwater engulfing Gyirong Port, a land crossing at the border of Nepal and China. Entire villages were washed away by a torrent of water, mud, and debris. As of Wednesday, more than 3,800 people were still missing.
Research continues into what exactly caused the flash floods, with initial reports pointing to a glacial collapse. More recent reports have attributed the cause to a landslide.
“It was just horrifying,” Minneapolis resident Rashmi Sharma said of the videos. “It was like the apocalypse,” she said. Sharma was born in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Sharma heard about the flood from a coworker and immediately checked with her parents in Kathmandu. They have close family friends from the hard-hit region of Trishuli who are missing in the aftermath of the flood.
Minnesota is home to over 3,500 Nepalis and around 5,000 Tibetans, many in exile, the second-largest Tibetan-American population after New York.
Shrestha said that floods and landslides are common in Nepal during the monsoon months of July and August. “But this magnitude of landslide and flash flood, [I’ve] never heard of, never seen like that,” he said.
Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
Shrestha, who was a civil engineer in rural Nepal before he moved to Minnesota, has friends who are hydroelectric engineers in Trishuli. “My friends are giving me updates that the person who used to work with me is now trapped in the trail.” Rescuers are rushing to reach several hydropower workers who are believed to be trapped inside tunnels.
Most of the reporting on the flood has been on the extent of the damage and the rescue efforts in Nepal. But Tibet, too, has been impacted, the extent of which is largely unknown, Jigme Ugen, a Tibetan Minnesotan and president of the Tibetan National Congress, said.
“We don’t have any data or information coming from inside occupied Tibet,” Ugen said. “We cannot even fathom the impact of this because entire villages, the Kyirong (Gyirong) villages where the Tibetans were submerged.”
Namgyal, a Twin Cities health care worker, was able to reach his family in the Kham region of Tibet after the flood to check if his parents are okay. But he said most of the information he’s been able to gather is from social media.
He asked to use his last name out of fear of being targeted by the Chinese government in Tibet.
He, too, said that the death records by the Chinese government are a substantial undercount. His friend, a fellow Minnesotan, said 15 of his family members in Kyirong are missing.
Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
Tibetan Minnesotans as well as advocacy groups are concerned about an information blackout from China on the extent of the damage of the flood.
Tashi Nyima Cerso, the president of the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota, echoed similar concerns, adding that even though he has sisters in the Tingri region of Tibet, where he is from, he has no way of getting in touch with them.
Cerso and Ugen emphasized the impact of the Chinese government’s extensive mining and industrial development in Tibet as one of the major contributors to this devastation.
Nepal contributes 0.1% to the global greenhouse emissions, according to a 2022 World Bank Group report. A 2025 National Library of Medicine study found that the Tibetan Plateau supports the largest alpine meadow ecosystem globally and is considered extremely vulnerable to global warming.
“Nepal and Tibet, we are not industrial. We are not contributing to global warming, but the outcome or the effect of that global warming, we are the victims,” Shrestha said.
While it is very difficult to extend funds to those impacted in Tibet, Ugen said that many Tibetans in Minnesota are donating to the Nepali Prime Ministers’ disaster fund to aid the Tibetans in Nepal while also supporting families back home individually.
How to help
The Association of Nepalis in Minnesota is raising recovery funds that will go to the Nepal Prime Minister’s disaster relief fund.
