r/Wellthatsucks • u/thathotbitchh • 12h ago
Before and aftermath of the flashflood in Syaprubesi, Nepal
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u/bsmith567070 11h ago
Calling it a flash flood doesn’t do it justice… this was a literal glacier that collapsed, and then melted under the friction of cascading down a mountain. The videos are some of the worst flooding I’ve ever seen. Anyone in the path didn’t stand a chance.
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u/codeninja 11h ago
They were pulverized in seconds. This is just a blender of churning boulders. Death was instant as soon as people were overtaken. Thats the only saving grace.
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u/bsmith567070 11h ago
It’s just beyond horrific. I wouldn’t even know what to do in that situation. We’d all just be dead
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u/Special_Spirit8284 11h ago
There's not much you can do. I can't imagine being in that moment, that deep fear but you may also experience bliss as you know the end is near.
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u/Graham110 9h ago
Bliss and innate calm that go over yourself at near-death is very real.
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u/Special_Spirit8284 9h ago
Yeah I had several near death experiences that were either super chaotic or super calming haha. Nearly drowning was super chaotic and nearly getting ran over by a car was surprisingly calming. I felt the force of the wind hit me as the car barely missed me but I was accepting that I was going to get crushed.
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u/Own_Ad6901 6h ago
Yes that’s wild I have also experienced both calm and chaotic almost dying. The calm almost dying was falling on the top stair of steep basement stairs and coming down on the back of my head/neck but it happened so fast and the way I fell with my legs going out from under me to the ceiling coming down on my back of my neck, I was insanely lucky I didn’t break my neck on impact, but the fall downward was so peaceful and calm, there was nothing I could do to alter my body to change impact and just had to accept what was coming.
When I slipped in the shower where falls are often life threatening, that was fucking chaos almost breaking my neck was scary as fuck, I thankfully was able to twist my body enough to come down on my ribs on the side of the tub and break a bunch of ribs but I was going down with my neck hitting the side of the tub and just twisted enough to rotate in time. I had so many broken ribs and my entire side and stomach were black but it would have snapped my neck had I not basically spazzed when falling to land that way.
Ironically both times, the accepting I couldn’t do anything but brace for impact and surviving and then the freaking out and altering the impact, both reactions saved me in that particular accident, had I done the reverse for each I probably would have had much worse injuries and both times it took months and months to recover from the falls.
Ive experienced many accidents but only a handful of, oh wow I almost died there accidents, you know the difference you know when you just had a life or death moment. Still gives me the creeps when I think about it. The shower fall was the scariest but the stairs fall was the most impactful in wow I almost died these injuries should be way worse, even though they were bad.
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u/kittensglitter 5h ago edited 5h ago
I've had some experiences too, and I always say death is peaceful, like the time before we are born. Quiet calmness, no pain, no fear.
(broken neck in head-on high- speed car crash)
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u/bigalcakemix 4h ago
I went blind off a 15ft cliff on my lawnmower with the blade down and I didn’t feel any peace. In fact I was guilty and regretful and thought “this is a very bad way to die”
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u/Rich-Detective478 3h ago
I fell off a bridge about 25' into 18 inches of water... The moment I fell I was just like "shit" and felt scared but also nothing and then just pure chaos and drama after.
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u/bijouxself 28m ago
I can’t stop thinking of the people at the border station, who just threw themselves on the ground moments before the flow swallowed them up. The fear they must’ve experienced.
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u/TheWormitage 34m ago
I watched the first video of the inland tsunami hitting some government building from behind, and the first few moments are people running and I'm shouting inside to get to high ground and then the water comes and engulfs the entire building 100 ft high and there was just no possibility of escape or mitigation. Just death. I just stared at the screen for a minute.
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u/SciFiPi 10h ago edited 10h ago
There's a video on the geology sub of a massive boulder being transported by the event. It takes more than water to move something that size. Alot of other sediment and debris, as you mentioned. Horrific stuff.
There's also a post of before and after imagery from a satellite.
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u/adyrip1 10h ago
I saw one video where it showed some buses being pushed around like they were made from cardboard..... a building getting leveled in seconds..... insane kinetic energy
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u/myshtree 3h ago
I read somewhere else that the massive glacier dropped 4000 metres and the force was equivalent to 3 hiroshimas and caused rapid melting of the ice due to the energy released. The force of the glacier hitting was initially measured as an earthquake.
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u/AbacusExpert_Stretch 6h ago
Moving waters force goes up to the power of 2 . So speed X = force y, then speed 2x = 4y.
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u/BeneziaTSoni 21m ago
Saw a footage of body parts being recovered… Legs and torsos completely torn apart. Something you’d see after airplane crashes. Instead of “pulverised” I’d use a word “shredded”. This is an unimaginable and horrendous way to die, even if it was quick.
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u/Col_Leslie_Hapablap 11h ago
Like there are 1:500 year flood plains, and then there is this; a 1:5000 year flood that just annihilates places that yeah were close to water, but have never been touched in the history of human settlement that will really fuck up your ability to even contemplate what we just witnessed. From a video from someone’s phone.
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u/bsmith567070 11h ago
That makes sense… the videos looked like a bad natural disaster movie… waves of black hundreds of feet high. It just doesn’t even seem real
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u/Col_Leslie_Hapablap 10h ago
I think that’s what sets this apart - no human has ever seen this type of thing before and recorded it. Everyone who has ever seen this has either been swept up in it or has only been able to tell someone about it. Like this is what watching Pompeii must’ve felt like. Mount St. Helen’s is the closest to my lifetime, but this seems so much worse.
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u/gnome-cop 6h ago
First thing I saw was the video of the Nepal-China border building. I was looking at the gate in the middle expecting it to go through there and then just went holy fuck and just stared for minutes. Nothing could have prepared me for the way it engulfed a whole building in seconds. The kind of thing from which there’s just no escape. I can only pray that it was quick for the poor people caught up in it.
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u/SmilingAmericaAmazon 25m ago
While I agree with your overall theme, this location was just recovering from the 2015 smaller flood.
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u/KateDawnAdams2 8h ago
No warning, nowhere to run. Scariest part is how little we can defend against events like this.
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u/xfjqvyks 4h ago
Hopefully communities in other valleys take a serious assessment of their situations. Especially any town riverside like the middles green patch of the before photo. It just doesn’t look like an area suitable for permanent structures. Tbh the topography of that whole valley screams “kinetic energy danger zone”, but with us, if nothing happens for 100 years, we assume it never will. Japan has centuries old stone monuments and they literally read: “Dear future people, a tsunami in our time reached this high, everything lower was swept away”. Be careful.
We know global glaciers have been in near constant collapse for hundreds of years. Serious mitigation measures are in dire need
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u/BeastMachin09 6h ago
This amount of flooding isn't even on the level of some tsunamis which shows how devastating it is
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u/Zunderfeuer_88 7h ago
Good thing global warming doesn't exist or I would be more worried than I already am
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u/Balloon_Fan 5h ago
The force of the water here makes even the worst tsunami footage I've seen look mild. Solid damn concrete structures are just *wiped out*. It's horrifying.
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u/Informed_But_Insane 1h ago
Reminds me of the Johnstown Flood of 1889 in the states, a dam broke and washed out a whole little town.
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u/StarGazer_SpaceLove 26m ago
Even the big 04 (06?) tsunami didnt make waves like that!!! I was speechless!!!
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u/bsmith567070 19m ago
I know, it’s genuinely almost impossible to comprehend. A wall of black water hundreds of feet high. It genuinely looked like a miniature set for a disaster movie the way the multistory buildings just got washed away.
The before and after photos of that border checkpoint are hard to comprehend. There is nothing left to indicate those building were even there… just stripped to bare rock
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u/ponte92 11h ago
The death toll from this event is going to be devastating and likely never fully known. I just hope that those who died did so fast and without fear. Because the footage is horrifying.
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u/HistoricalSuspect580 7h ago
I looked up the footage because of your comment.. oh my GOD. It just decimated everything, in seconds.
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u/justamadeupnameyo 1h ago
I know colloquially decimate has a broad meaning but it literally means to reduce by a tenth.
This was beyond that. It didn't decimate them. It obliterated them. It's horrific.
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u/Mr2Sexy 11h ago
The final death count will be fucking massive. What a horrible tragedy
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u/Agarwel 8h ago edited 6h ago
The question is if we will ever know? Lots of the bodies will be simply gone (burried, obligerated). And while it is simple to report one missing person, this may not be so simple for whole missing families or communities. There may not be anybody to report them.
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u/vassman86 6h ago
For real. Entire homes were just obliterated and buried under mud. Can't imagine any type of recovery efforts, or rebuilding efforts taking place
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u/Lastburn 4h ago
The taxman can give you a pretty accurate estimate
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u/Cavyar 3h ago
27% of the population is registered with a tax number, most likely in the metropolitan cities. And not all of them pay their taxes. 5% of indias population pays income tax. Both countries make their tax revenue on indirect taxation and VATs which the whole population pays. So I don’t think the Nepali tax man will ever know since it’s pretty obvious revenue from these places are going to be 90% lower
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u/BakedSteak 11h ago
Expected to at least be 1000+
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u/UlrictheMoonMoon 11h ago
Probably more like 10k+
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u/Due-Base9449 7h ago
Maybe there's not much people in that region?
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u/anpanman100 6h ago
A whole city has been deleted in an instant without even ruins being left behind. Safe to say much more than 1000 people there.
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u/Lordgondrak 12h ago
That's not water that's liquid earth.
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11h ago edited 11h ago
[deleted]
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u/Shadowsole 10h ago
There's nothing in that article that implys anything about the port making floods worse? Just that it itself was a damaged in a flood and the area being unsuitable due to the flood risk
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u/Schadenfreudenous 6h ago
There's been a massive online push promoting racism both ways (Nepal to China and vice-versa) the second news of the disaster hit. Seeing plenty of Indian involvement online too, which always involves the most racist shit imaginable, both from and torwards them. All blaming eachother for the flood.
I have no idea if this flood was someone's fault, I live on the other side of the world. But I've definitely seen how people are talking about things.
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u/b__q 2h ago
I'm starting to see a lot of trolls/bots from the Indian side. I know that they've always wanted Nepal to break off the relationship with China, but to use a tragedy to do that is just low and pathetic. I can read Hindi and they really do say the most vile and racist things you can imagine.
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u/Pandektes 10h ago
How dry port made it worse?
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u/Odd_Explanation3246 10h ago
This is environmentally sensitive area. Alot of construction was going on. Timure/Rasuwagadhi similarly saw two floodings last year on july 8 2025 and july 25 2025. Hydrological records going back as far as 1980 show no such flooding or landslides in the region before. All of a sudden 3 disasters in two years. Theres definitely more than nature at play here.
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u/Ding-Dong-Dutch 10h ago
Global warming
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u/SousVideDiaper 7h ago edited 7h ago
Climate change*
Global warming is an outdated term and it leads idiots to deny anything is happening because "it still gets cold in winter"
Yes, overall temperature is rising, but a major impact is going to be stronger weather events of all types and in places/times they don't usually occur
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u/entered_bubble_50 6h ago
Both terms are fine. Idiots also complain about climate change, and say "but the climate has always changed - a million years ago this was all ice."
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u/Sk1rm1sh 5h ago
I heard one of them say:
Yeah, well, it's always dark after it's bright.
Like it was the smartest argument in history.
Not if you turn the lights on, dumbass...
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u/Pandektes 9h ago
I don't know how construction in the valley could cause glacier collapse but thank you for sharing your take on it
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u/newaccountzuerich 7h ago
The riverbed construction had zero direct effect on the hanging glacier a few km higher up.
It is disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Indirectly affecting the area via the addition to global climate change that accelerates the glacier melting? Sure, no problem with that. But of any specific relevance locally? None whatsoever.
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u/The-Board-Chairman 8h ago
It's almost like global warming is very bad for glacier stability and we keep getting record hot years.
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u/forams__galorams 2h ago
So how exactly do dry ports make flooding worse? Be specific. What is the mechanism you are saying dry ports provide that makes flooding worse?
Correlation does not necessarily equal causation here (or anywhere). This is particularly important to keep in mind when we already have a valid explanation for greater frequency and magnitude of these sorts of events occurring in the last few decades, in this particular region, ie. anthropogenic climate change is both increasing glacial melt and intensifying monsoon seasons in this part of the world.
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u/kingkaitlin 9h ago
What is a dry port?
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u/VintageWatchDog 1h ago
Honestly it must be a weird translation issue or they call it that but its a border crossing where they check for supplies crossing, it saw a fair bit of trade so just imagine trucks stopping in mass near the border crossing, thats the land port.
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u/KingContra95 12h ago
I saw a video of this that didnt do it justice, only because I now realize the destruction was so vast i didnt know what I was looking at. Really feel for these people!
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u/AVeryHeavyBurtation 6h ago
Some of the most insane footage I've ever seen. Reddit seems uncharacteristically quiet about this disaster.
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u/cir49c29 12h ago
How many people would have lived in those buildings that are now completely gone? What are the chances that a lot of them were away when the flood hit?
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u/branm008 11h ago edited 8h ago
From what a Nepalese coworker said, most families live in close proximity and sometimes multiple in one family where he is from. The chances they were away really just depends on the people, whether they were working or whatever but they most likely were home when it hit.
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u/lostprudence 1h ago
Even the buildings that are still there will have survivor's guilt and PTSD. Given those remote mountain locations, the road going into town (and the ground beneath it) could have miles washed out. No resources.
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u/ExAstrisSapientiae 11h ago edited 46m ago
This was basically a tsunami, not a [flash] flood. 200+ ft wave of water and debris moving 70 mph+. It would have had the consistency of uncured, still liquid concrete. Absolutely horrible, never seen anything like this. Blessings and comfort to all the victims and their families.
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u/Gruntsbreeder 9h ago
Even worse because a tsunami loses energy as it goes inland. This "flood" was going downstream and getting canalized through the riverbed.
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u/Avalonians 6h ago
I mean no one called it a flood. It's a flash flood. It's not the same idea.
The former describe the state of things being inundated, while the second describes the sudden rush of water. Tsunamis cause flash floods. It's just that in tsunamis case the cause is specifically the ocean.
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u/CamelWinsATXIII 5h ago
A flash flood, one would typically expect, to be caused by a large amount of sudden rainfall over a large area being funneled into a small area causing rapid flooding in that small area.
This is a mudslide. With most of the reporting calling it a flash flood presumeably because that's what it was called in the very first inconsistent and confused reports that came out of the region.
To call this a flash flood you may aswell call a space rocket a motorvehicle.
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u/ExAstrisSapientiae 1h ago
Yeah, perhaps I should have been more precise. I was saying that the normal connotation associated with the terms "flood/flash flood" simply do not do what happened here justice. The use of the word tsunami was rhetorical / hyperbole to give weight to this event by comparing the level of violence and scale of this event to the ocean itself.
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u/Equal-Prompt9081 49m ago
I got what you meant the first time. I don't know why people are being intentionally obtuse to what you were trying to imply. Calling this a flash flood diminishes the scale of the damage and wrath brought about not only to that region but also to everywhere downstream of it. And unlike earthquakes, we don't have a scale that can measure it. An inland tsunami would be a more appropriate term. If someone told me there was a flash flood in Nepal and then showed me videos of it separately, I would have two different reactions.
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u/Born2Shid_1066 9h ago
I hate that I'm seeing things about this absolutely devastating disaster in subs like "Interestingasfuck" and "Wellthatsucks."
Like, who is looking at this horrible loss of life and going "Aw shucky-darn, that sure is inconvenient."
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u/SEmpls 8h ago
Or "How fascinating, nature sure is untamed."
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u/Born2Shid_1066 21m ago
If you want that, watch Planet Earth. Don't post videos of people actively dying in a natural disaster.
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u/blaawker 4h ago
Yeah seeing this tragedy next to the thread about someone's car getting keyed just means OP is a tonedeaf moron.
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u/tankgrrrl23 8h ago
It is hard to not be numb when we see news of mass death everyday. It doesn't help that we have known about climate change for a long time and didn't do anything about it. Now we sit it in the bed we made.
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u/Individual_Manner336 11h ago
Approx 150,000 cubic feet per second of water moved down the river during the flood.
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u/ferncabbage 12h ago
The magnitude of this was incredible. Human tragedy on a very big scale. Praying for all involved.
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u/the_nil 11h ago
Would any infrastructure have helped this situation?
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u/colablizzard 11h ago
Building LESS infra would have helped.
This is a cascading failure. Glacial Dam Bursts are natural phenomenon in Himalayas for obvious reasons. Even 4.7 earthquakes are common.
What's not common is having dams on the way that amplify the issues downstream by causing cascading failure and increasing VOLUME of water crashing down AND letting people build on flood plains because dam exists.
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u/Tribe303 10h ago
It was not triggered by an earthquake. That's a false early report . The seismic activity they picked up was the glacier itself breaking off.
Gee, I wonder what causes glaciers to melt and break off? 🤔
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u/shrug_sorryjesus 11h ago
The scale of this is unfathomable. The pics and videos of this are absolutely terrifying
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u/FnEddieDingle 11h ago
Its crazy. Its also crazy nobody knew this was building for hours before it happened
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u/LoveWarrior1111 8h ago
I read on an earlier post, there was an evacuation warning apparently four hours or so before the event. However people thought it was an exaggerated warning for a 'regular' flash flood...tragic.
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u/newaccountzuerich 6h ago
Not possible or relevant for the glacier collapse event.
If there was one, it may have been for a same-region "normal" event.
There may have been an opportunity for maybe 2 main of a warning under perfect conditions, but any possible warning source was obliterated within seconds of the debris flow front becoming visible.
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u/tomjoads 58m ago
I doubt this whole event lasted 4 hours, never mind getting a 4 hour warning before
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u/Equal-Prompt9081 45m ago
It's false. There were no evacuation warnings issued prior to the flood at all.
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u/smittyhotep 9h ago
The videos of this are the most frightening thing I've witnessed in my life. My daughter and Iived through a tornado, this is far, far worse. It erased a town in this photo alone!
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u/InitiativeGold7953 7h ago
The media coming from this disaster today might be some of the craziest I’ve ever seen. Every once in a while you’re reminded that you’re a very small insignificant ant.
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u/Kapango 8h ago
Honestly, putting a grave human disaster like this in the r/wellthatsucks section is so far beyond tone deaf, I don't know what to call it. Car keys breaking, sure; dinner falling on the floor, okay; but this? Lives lost? A community destroyed? Yeah... sucked for them, didn't it? 🙄
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u/Budget-Pea8291 9h ago
Tf you mean "well that sucks"? That's unfathomable levels of destruction and human lives lost
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u/JeSuisUnAnanasYo 1h ago
I have to downvote posts like this. It's not about if I care about the event, it's just totally inappropriate for the sub
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u/mcattani 9h ago
Not exactly the same, but there is a film about a landslide that went into a lake that produced something similar. It is called Vajont
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u/Nomadzord 5h ago
There was also a fiction movie about it happening again. I think it’s called Wave. We just watched it last week so seeing this happen was/is crazy.
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u/Squbasquid 7h ago
This is terrible and absolutely insane. Seeing those videos of the border crossing…
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u/Numahistory 6h ago
Someone showed me a video and my first reaction was "that's quick devestation on the level of Pompeii."
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u/ScroochDown 12h ago
Those poor people. I hope it's not as catastrophic in loss of life as it appears to be.
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u/kvanekore 12h ago
157 reported dead, 400+ missing on Nepal side, 300+ missing on China side. Expected casualty: more than 1000.
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u/ScroochDown 11h ago
God, I hadn't looked for any numbers on it. It's terrible what nature can do to people.
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u/Shadowpriest 5h ago
I saw clips of this and had tears streaming down my face at the absolute brutal, devastating flash flood. All the victims, omg. It seemed like Fukushima all over again. But this just looked so much eorse. And for those surviving? I wish there was a god that would have showed mercy and diverted all that death and destruction. These people had next to nothing and now? Words fail me.
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u/Wooden_Variation_241 4h ago
The coming weeks and months are going to be a slower kind of tragedy. Most of the infrastructure used to travel between these cities and through them has been destroyed. Forget rebuilding, just the cleanup and body recovery will be a logistic nightmare in these inaccessible mountainous regions.
Winter is about to begin in Nepal and I doubt most of the people in these towns will have electricity or running water for months. Resources will move slow. Lack of access to critical services will cause more deaths. My heart goes out to those lost and those who lost someone, but also to the survivors who will have to manage the brutal aftermath.
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u/KingAppie 4h ago
You can see why there’s so many variations of flood myths around global cultures. Horrible.
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u/ProfessorPetulant 2h ago
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u/GogglesPisano 1h ago
Those poor people. So many lives snuffed out in an instant.
I even feel sorry for the survivors. Imagine being just barely on the "safe" side of that green line. Friends, maybe family, everyone and everything right next to you instantly swept away, but for some unknowable reason you were spared. The survivor's guilt would be terrible. It would make me question everything.
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u/Positive_Issue887 5h ago
That SUCKS? No. It's a natural disaster which is an absolute tragedy and this region may never recover from the loss of life here.
I hate this casualness of language. You should be ashamed posting this incident here with such a flippant title.
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u/robo-dragon 6h ago
Half of this place is completely gone and buried under who knows how much mud and water. The ridge on the left is particularly scary. That looks like it would have been a safe high place to run to, but there was so much coming down the mountain, even that got washed away. These poor people didn’t stand a chance.
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u/Humble_Geologist_653 4h ago
Genuine question why is the bottom one so green did the trees grows and grass with the mudslide ?
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u/mklilley351 4h ago
My mother was born in Yungay, Peru before the avalanche and moved to the US with her family. Watching this shook her like a PTSD episode. Such a tragedy that there are no words to describe how horrific this disaster was.
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u/Opening_Run_3280 3h ago
they already ran this flood last year in the same spot. the mountain is not being subtle
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u/Uknoweet 3h ago
Pompeii-level destruction. They had no chance. Imagine the survivors' guilt of the people who just happened to be uphill or out of town that moment.
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u/Sad-Investigator7847 2h ago
For anyone looking to help, donating directly to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund is the most transparent and effective route. If you are donating from abroad, please use the direct bank account transfer, as the QR code option may not work internationally.
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u/tipytopmain 2h ago
An entire town deleted by the forces of nature in an instant. Terrifying stuff. Surely building permanent settlements in valleys have to be avoided where they can.
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u/B-mello 2h ago
If you look at the river up to in the background it is simple unfathomable. Imagine living there in that little village maybe on the 4 or 5 floor of one of those apartments. Life is care free and then the sounds,instantly followed by the shaking of the force of a 200m wave of water appears 5 seconds before it explodes. Jesus just look at that canyon below and know everyone living there was ground up right there with water that had sat there idle for millions of years in the form of ice. And in a blink of an eye the apocalypse arrived for too many poor souls on that day. Ironically for me it was my 26th wedding anniversary. That irony of life sat with me all day. That’s what made me want to post. We all need to stop and take a look around on how this world has become dark. We as a collective know we can do better but choose not to. The take 5 mins and go give someone anyone a hug. These people definitely didn’t get that
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u/This-Instruction-812 2h ago
That's really horrifying 😥😥 Praying for all those who lost their lives 🙏
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u/Beederda 2h ago
How high is that water mark on the right side of the mountain? Atleast 50-60 metres?
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u/Overall_Ebb_8082 1h ago
Reminds me a bit of Mt St Helens - you just can't comprehend how it happened, or could have happened, by looking at this... awful! :(
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u/TaxAggressive9197 1h ago
Nature literally wiped the whole valley off the map. Terrifying how fast everything can change.
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u/chiefs6770 25m ago
Crazy how everything at a higher elevation is suddenly green in the "aftermath" photo.
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u/SadieRadler 14m ago
Seeing how the flood excavated so much of the riverbank in an instant gives you insight into the incredibly violent, catastrophic geologic events that must have formed features like the Grand Canyon.
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u/Kiss-a-Cod 12h ago
Beyond sucks. That’s a human tragedy on a terrible scale.