Nepal Disaster Update Live coverage

World disasters, live

What is happening elsewhere, from the UN alerting bodies and named newsrooms. The same sourcing rules as the Nepal coverage.

Earthquakes, floods, cyclones, wildfires and the humanitarian response to them, collected from the same kind of sources this site uses for Nepal: UN alerting bodies first, then named international newsrooms. Every headline links to whoever published it. Nothing is rewritten here and no figure on this page is this site's own.

What is happening now

Snapshot taken when this page was last built. The Live tab on the home page refreshes the same feed while you read it, and lets you switch between Nepal and the world.

How to read these alerts

GDACS is the UN and European Commission's global disaster alert system. It colour-codes every event by the humanitarian impact it expects: green for little, orange for significant, red for severe. Only orange and red are carried here, because green alerts fire many times a day and would bury everything else.

USGS publishes every earthquake it detects. Magnitude 5.5 and above is the cut-off here. Magnitude is not damage: a magnitude 6 under a city can kill thousands, and the same quake far offshore can pass unnoticed. Depth and where people live decide that.

ReliefWeb is UN OCHA's clearing house for humanitarian reporting. Its situation reports are slower than a newsroom and far more careful, which makes it the place to check a figure a headline gave you.

Why this sits next to the Nepal coverage

The hazards are the same hazards. A glacial lake outburst above Rasuwa and one in the Andes fail for the same reason, and the flood safety rules on the hazard guide hold anywhere. Nepal is where this site watches closely; this page is where it keeps an eye on everywhere else.

Following an event in Nepal? Start with the current briefing, the emergency numbers or the official relief fund.