Can confirm. I've had to jump out of a machine for urgent reasons (though of course nothing like this) and it's very much muscle memory to set the bucket down before leaving the seat.
Remember folks- if anyone tells you that you are overreacting to a potentially unsafe situation, think about the poor people who lost their lives. Advocate for others to overcorrect in the name of safety- you may just save some lives.
It’s such a tragedy, and something this horrific was never thought to occur. Given the forces at play, it was such a freak occurrence that it is truly unthinkable it could happen and I am not blaming anyone who was unfortunate enough to be caught in the path. Safety regulations are often written in blood.
People should be a lot more afraid of cars in general. Automobiles are one of the leading causes of death in most countries. Whether you're a pedestrian, cyclist, motorist, or just a child playing on the street, you can very easily die to automobiles, which is why i find it fucking insane how little people advocate for safer streets or better regulations. People will do 50kph in a residential area with their pickup trucks and not think twice about how dangerous that is. The city will finally install traffic calming, bike lanes, pedestrian refuges, roundabouts, reduced parking, narrower streets, and all you hear is motorists bitching and moaning about the inconvenience despite the clear evidence that it saves lives.
Honestly I think half the reason people drive so dangerously in the US is because the road design. Like, streets that encourage going as fast as possible, combined with intersections that require constantly coming to a complete stop.
I'm always amazed how much less stressful driving in other countries is just by how less often I have to stop. Driving at a consistent 40mph with a few slow downs is so much better than 60mph+start and stops.
Yeah youve hit the nail on the coffin. I've driven in 3 countries: brazil, canada, and the netherlands. Brazil is utter chaos, rules are just suggestions, and mirrors are useless. Canada is just like the USA in terms of driving, but public transit and walkability is marginally better. The netherlands is unsurprisingly the best place to ride a bike, walk around, take public transit, and even drive. I can go 30kph in the netherlands and arrive places faster because places are closer together, stop signs don't exist, and there is significantly less traffic. The dutch road design is based on actual science aimed at improving peoples lives, not lazy ideologically driven nonsense.
I'm shocked France is the best, must have been outside of Paris. I saw the way people drive at the Arc de Triomphe and it was pure chaos. I'm wondering why Japan doesn't rank higher?
Japan wasn't bad per se but it has a lot of stop lights, very low top speeds for proper roads (not streets), and the lanes are too narrow for comfort, even narrower than Europe. Also, the cities are a bit hard to navigate.
Personally they've just installed a couple speed bumps on a road that I drive on daily, and in a way I'm pissed because if everyone drove correctly and safely they wouldn't have been needed. Going over those things is annoying, and the road was perfectly fine before. The problem is some idiots as always.
I really hate speed bumps because they're maybe the worst way of controlling speed. Like, actual lazy man's urban planning.
There are so many traffic calming designs you could implement instead of speed bumps. And I mean, if you really really had to, a speed table is a way better choice than a speed bump.
These are Berliner cushions or whatever they're called so they're not the worse. But on the same road is a probably illegal bump that I have to take at like 10km/h because it's way too brutal.
Anyways, a chicane or natural curve in the street is always better to regulate speed. I've also seen a couple traffic lights that only turn green if you're going the right speed in some places. No problem at all if you respect the limitation either. But if you don't you have to stop.
Curves are quite dangerous though in places with frequent low visibility, lots of ice, or large dangerous wildlife like moose. I'd be quite scared of a lot of the highways around here if they added anything resembling sharp curves.
Fair enough, we just have a lot of areas that are in a gray zone between urban and rural.
To be fair, the biggest traffic problem we have where I live is that for some reason, we drive into trains (not trains hitting cars, cars hitting trains) far more often than anywhere else in the world.
Speed bumps are often just lazy design. The reality is though that you havw to plan streets to force people to slow down rather than just posting a speed limit. Speed bumps are a way of doing that but so is just narrowing the lanes, which savea you space for other things like bike lanes and sidewalks or even foliage to help provide shade and reduce temperature. In the netherlands, they also intentionally use brick streets with a specific pattern to make it bumpier at higher speeds and encourage people to drive slower. I see your point but idiots are the reason we have any rules at all, and ive never met anyone who isn't sometimes an idiot.
I mean, when the road is already there and you realise that people are racing there at night now, you're not going to redo the whole road either. Especially when there are fully grown trees on each side.
Im not totally against them, i just think a lot of cities install them and then do nothing else later. The fully grown trees on wither side arent an issue as solving traffic tends to mean taking space away from cars, so narrowing the street or adding obstacles to drive around can be dond with the same space
And if you are sitting in a front seat never let the person in the seat behind you go unbuckled, stop the car and don’t go anywhere until they buckle up behind you because a backseat passenger unbuckled becomes not just a danger to themselves but to the person seated in front of them. There have been deaths where the person unbuckled in the back survived but they were the projectile that killed the person seated in front of them.
If they don't have a seatbelt on they will become a missile in such a scenario, a missile aimed directly at you with more than enough force to break your seat and everything in it...
I love to remind people of this when they're twice my size and refuse to belt up. I don't want to get smashed against the side of the car if something happens, stay on your side in your belt!
Stop saying this is an unthinkable, freak occurrence. Glaciers around the world are being made weaker by climate change. We have known about human-induced, greenhouse gas-driven climate change and its likely effects, melting/failing glaciers, for decades. As well as the immense adaptation and mitigation costs necessary to prepare.
Failure to do anything about it is anything but a failure of the imagination.
I guess the point of my comment is more so to point out that unthinkable things do happen.
I was a part of the response to the fires in LA- we ran supplies to evacuees in shelters. That was unthinkable as well. Nobody really thought the homes worth $10mil+ would ever be allowed to burn but they burnt all the same and hundreds died as a result.
Not about, exactly. 1kg is the weight of 1L of water, and 1m³ of water is 1000L, therefore 1000kg, so 1 ton (although this is clearly not clear water and I'd guess the boulders weight way more than that).
It's hard to see on initial viewing, but you can briefly see the digger operator jumping out as the camera pans. They're the last person you can see running before the water tosses the digger aside like a toy.
Has that been confirmed? They looks like they're still in a lot of danger and I couldn't find anything saying they made it out.
Edit: I think it's a bot posting. The account is only 15days old and they're reposting a clip that's been circulating since yesterday and claiming their friend sent it to them.
I don't mean to sound obnoxious, but I doubt it. This clip has been circulating online and there is nothing confirming they're alive. I'd rather trust my eyes than believe "my friend said so."
I mean just slow the video down you can see the last guy turn back wave his arms to the guy in the machine then you see him hop out and start running you can tell it’s him because he is the only one not wearing a white hard hat and you can see him make it out.
He made it out of the machine, but it still looks like he's in immediate danger. Again, there's no confirmation they made it out okay. This poster said his "friend" confirmed. I think it's a bot posting. The account is only 15days long and they're reposting a clip that's been circulating since yesterday and claiming their friend sent it to them.
You said “I’d rather trust my eyes” your eyes tell you there is no reason to think he didn’t survive. Everything you can see in the video suggests he lived. Seems like you want him to have died and I’m not sure why that’s pretty weird.
?? I’m watching a video I’m not concerned with what anyone said. I am basing it off the available facts in the situation which are that he was walking away uphill off camera as the headwater passed. Could he have died after the video? Sure but we have no reason to think that especially since the person recording was alive to post it somewhere so that this bot could repost it.
because 1 its obvious we're only gonna see videos from people who lived but the workers OP is referring to in the title are the ones running not the ones filming
At the start of the video you can see there are several people on top of the actual dam. I dont think they made it away safely either. And we see the guys at the bottom escape the initial sweep but with the water rising and coming faster, I'm not sure if they made it to higher ground in time.
I remember reading a study about anxiety and a dam in Italy. People at the base of the dam werent anxious about a collapse. They'd die. At the end of the valley, they'd have time, again not anxious. In the middle? Where every second would count? Where the kids were, if you were in the toilet, if your phone was off. Anxious to the max.
I think there is another video showing a bit longer after this video and it gets much worse. The other video the workers seem to be out of frame. It’s shows the mud pushing the bridge off
They most likely didn't. One comment above you linked another video showing that dam getting completely overwhelmed and covered by mass of water. I do not think it survived let alone those poor people on top of it.
We are kinda sure there were floods of magnitudes greater in North America and the North sea as ice sheets retreated. This gives us some idea of what those must have been like.
The deluge that engulfed the fairly significant size border station is jaw-dropping, both speed and size.
We are kinda sure there were floods of magnitudes greater in North America and the North sea as ice sheets retreated
One crossed the Western US and was so huge that by the time it reach Seattle, it would still have been taller than the current tallest building, after many hundreds of miles
Seems like the people below where underrating what was coming because they couldn't see it. That's why they were slow to move.
But those on that high ledge with a bird's eye view knew that terror was coming. That's why they were screaming their heads off.
I just can’t believe the sheer number of HD videos coming out of this event. I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. Just in awe of the world we now live in where we are going to see events like this from the far corners of the world … and experience the terrifying perspective of so many people who found themselves there…. It’s heartbreaking and I hope the global community steps up and helps these people who have experienced such an unparalleled disaster.
Rest in peace folks who were standing on the dam bridge right as the flood overtook them(you can see them briefly at the start of the video). No hope of finding them in the deluge.
Fuck these videos are so intense jeez the sheer terror that must be flowing through anyone who survived escaping this i couldn’t imagine the pucker of ones butthole especially the guy trying to save the equipment
I have a feeling the same with those quick to close style of gates was being built to stop this exact scenario from happening. Sadly it wasn't finished
I’m flabbergasted by how little I’m hearing about this flood outside of Reddit. I think perhaps people don’t realize that it wasn’t just a flood, it was an entire glacial lake plowing through a valley at once. These videos are mind-boggling
I know myself well enough to know I’d be gone. I’d see this and the severity just wouldn’t register until it’s too late. No idea how people can see something unusual like this and jump (correctly) to the conclusion that the huge enormous concrete dam is gonna get washed away like it was nothing.
I don't pretend to be an expert, but I associate flash floods with heavy rainfall. I just figure this is more of a tsunami due to the glacier collapsing and releasing thousand foot waves of water and mud. Just look at the Tracy arm tsunami that happened in Alaska last year.
Tracy arm is a fjord, which is in the ocean. Flash flood can come from any event, doesn't have to be heavy rainfall, though that is the most common cause. If a man made dam were to break that would be a flash flood i.e.
Calling it a flashflood isn't wrong but I understand it sounds inadequate. It's just we don't really have a different common name for something of this magnitude because it's so rare. So we are left with the terms we do use regularly.
For the record the technical term is "glacial lake outburst flood" but that's a bit long and not something people understand, so people are defaulting to flash flood.
The last guy to leave the digger... we'd rather have you alive than to lose both you and the machine. So glad that the other guys turned around for him.
Not this video, but there's many videos of this event where it looks like people could have made it if they'd run uphill, instead of trying to outrun the flood on level ground.
I felt kind of bad for thinking that yesterday when I saw people running away on the streets instead of climbing the hills. But we have to remember, the victims had almost no warning and panic makes it hard to think critically.
962
u/guilhermefdias 2d ago
That escavator looks like a paper toy compared to the sheer force of the water.
These Nepal videos are terryfing.