A British aid volunteer, Gloucester councillor Alastair Chambers, has said Nepali authorities wrongly announced he had been "rescued" from devastating floods a week after he had actually travelled to the country to help with relief efforts. Officials, including a search-and-rescue spokesman and the Nepali Army, publicly credited him among those saved by helicopter, a mix-up that spread through international media before he clarified he had never needed rescuing at all.

Mr Chambers arrived in Nepal on 27 August, a day after floodwaters swept across the Nepal-Tibet border, and joined the Volunteers Corps Nepal delivering food, sleeping bags and water purification supplies to villages cut off by collapsed bridges. He believes officials mistook him for a survivor when he registered his details on returning to Kathmandu aboard a humanitarian aid flight, after which he was contacted by around 15 journalists asking about his "rescue". The floods, which struck Rasuwa district north of Kathmandu on 26 August, have killed at least 1,050 people in Nepal and 16 in Tibet, with roughly 4,000 still missing.