Nepal still needs a clear account of what was known, what was done and what was not.
Just over a month after the August 26 Bhotekoshi–Trishuli flood, families are searching for missing loved ones while rebuilding shattered lives. Authorities received warning of a major flood moving downstream and alerts were issued, although the precise chronology requires reconstruction. Yet devastating losses followed.
In Annapurna Post's "Aapatkaleen Shasanka Sikai", I asked where Nepal's emergency-governance system failed and what it should learn. In "Between the Warning and the Flood" in The Himalayan Times, I examined the gap between warning and protection. The question is now sharper: who was responsible for turning warning into action, and were lives lost because evacuation and rescue did not follow in time?
The senior citizens' home at Devighat makes that question troubling. Media reports documented deaths, while an official of the home also confirmed missing residents during Nepal Bolchha's field reporting. Located downstream from Trishuli Bazaar, the home was, according to local field information, beside a police post and about 11–15 minutes by road from the Maithili Barrack military training centre and District Administration Office. It is also only a short aerial distance from Kathmandu. Why could elderly residents dependent on others not all be brought to safety?
An inquiry must establish when authorities knew of the threat, what evacuation arrangements existed and whether an opportunity to save lives was missed.
The flood's extraordinary force does not settle questions about the response. Once an upstream disaster became an approaching downstream threat, decisions mattered. That is where accountability begins: did authorities use the information, time and resources available with urgency, common sense and compassion?
Below Betrawati, warning time must be reconstructed settlement by settlement. This is particularly important given reports of hundreds missing in Bidur Municipality downstream. Such reports demand a precise account of what information was available, when it reached responsible institutions and when protective action began.
A message being sent proves transmission. It does not prove protection.
The test is whether warnings reached people in time and help reached those unable to protect themselves. Warning logs, deployment orders and requests for reinforcement should show what happened between warning and impact.
Security personnel, teachers and local residents helped people reach safety. Their actions deserve recognition-and raise whether response leaders supplied timely support.
Accountability must cover all three levels of government without treating their responsibilities as identical. The Prime Minister's Office, Home Ministry and NDRRMA, security forces, district authorities, Bagmati Province, municipalities and wards should explain what they knew, what authority and resources they had, and what they did. Collective responsibility must not become collective immunity.
Scrutiny must also reach hydropower operators, contractors and workplace-safety authorities. Reuter also reported that two workers were rescued alive from Upper Trishuli 3A nine days after the disaster and described an escape ladder that, according to an engineer, might have enabled others to escape had workers known about it. That demands examination of emergency training and escape arrangements.
International assistance requires similar scrutiny. The Kathmandu Post reported that the government initially declined foreign rescue teams before accepting specialised expertise. Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal later disputed the description that Nepal had "rejected" assistance, saying decisions reflected operational needs and security-agency advice.
Prime Minister Balendra Shah later told Parliament that no country had extensive expertise in such mud-filled tunnel rescues and that no immediately usable technology was available. Engineers disputed that assessment, pointing to specialised tunnel-rescue technologies and experience abroad. The inquiry should establish whether that assessment contributed to delay in mobilising specialised rescue capacity.
The same test applies to expertise already inside Nepal. Engineer and former NEA managing director Kulman Ghising urged authorities to bring in people familiar with affected hydropower sites; he was later asked to provide technical advice and coordination. The question is whether specialists who understood the tunnels and project layouts were mobilised early enough. If critical knowledge already existed in-country, when was it brought into the rescue effort-and could it have been mobilised sooner?
Nepal is right to demand climate justice. But climate attribution and response accountability are different questions. A scientific panel is examining the disaster's causes and climate change's possible role. Whatever it concludes, one question remains: once danger was recognised, was everything reasonably possible done to protect people?
Several official review mechanisms are under way, including a scientific panel, a National Assembly subcommittee and a House special committee. Their mandates differ. But which will reconstruct the operational response-warning, evacuation, command decisions, rescue priorities, workplace safety, domestic expertise and international assistance? If none does, an independent operational-accountability mechanism remains necessary.
Nepal's Gen Z protest inquiry offers a caution-not because the events are comparable, but because the accountability principle is. A judicial commission submitted its report, but its treatment of the second day's violence and destruction was limited and it recommended a separate investigation. Creating a commission must never substitute for comprehensive investigation and accountability.
The Bhotekoshi process should be judged not by how many committees are formed, but by whether evidence is preserved, the full sequence is examined, findings are published and consequences follow where responsibility is established.
Accountability is not about assigning blame regardless of evidence. An inquiry must distinguish unavoidable constraints, inadequate capacity, errors of judgment, institutional failure and misconduct-and establish what could reasonably have been done, who had authority and why action did or did not follow.
Reform need not wait. High-risk settlements need tested evacuation routes, safe destinations, backup communications and deployable teams. Care homes, schools and hydropower facilities need practical drills backed by functioning warning, evacuation and emergency-response systems. Procedures for mobilising domestic and international specialists must be tested before the next emergency.
Preparedness builds capacity. Readiness makes it usable when minutes matter.
Families do not need another promise that lessons will be learned. They need the records, chronology and reasons. Above all, they need an answer to the question this disaster leaves behind: when warning had become danger and lives were still at stake, who had the duty to act-and who must answer for what followed?
Ghale writes on a range of subjects, including global health, policy and diplomacy