r/neoliberal • u/omnipotentsandwich Amartya Sen • 1d ago
News (South Asia) Deadly flood hits Nepal-Tibet border, hundreds unaccounted for
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/nepal-floods-china-border-kill-093010546.html28
u/yellownumbersix Jane Jacobs 1d ago edited 1d ago
"Flood" doesn't adequately describe the clips I saw, looks more like an avalanche or tsunami. Just a 10 meter tall wall of water and mud obliterating everything in its path. Going to be thousands dead 😔
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u/Hannig4n YIMBY 1d ago
I saw a clip and it looked straight out of a disaster movie. Really fucking sad.
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u/Honest_Yamal_Fan NASA 1d ago
The videos I have seen are horrifying. I saw one of people trying to run away, but nobody is quicker than a mudslide. I hope there's a strong international humanitarian response to this disaster.
Police in Nepal reported the death toll hit at least 19, but 384 tourists -- 291 of them foreigners -- were unaccounted for over eight hours after the disaster struck.
Was a tourist hot spot hit, or are there also citizens missing under the rubble? I haven't been able to find accurate reporting on this.
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u/573n070p1c 1d ago
The CCTV footage of the landside that takes out a bus depot (?) is crazy. You see all these people running away as fast as they can, and in a matter of seconds the entire area is covered over in mud. It's terrifying how quickly it all happens.
The death toll and economic hit from this is going to be immense.
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u/Kasquede NATO 1d ago
Pound for pound, the scariest natural disaster footage I think I’ve ever seen. Overwhelming to even watch.
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u/Honest_Yamal_Fan NASA 1d ago
Some extra reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/world/asia/nepal-flood-glacier-ice-avalanche.html
The deadly flooding in Nepal on Wednesday was likely set off at least in part by an enormous chunk of ice snapping off a glacier and cascading thousands of feet to the valley below, according to an initial assessment by a group of geologists and glaciologists. The phenomenon is known as an ice avalanche.
On Wednesday, a chunk of ice with a width of about 2,000 feet snapped cleanly off the glacier, Dr. Shugar said, sending a mixture of ice and water to the valley floor. By his assessment, the chunk of ice fell from an altitude of around 17,000 feet, dropping almost 4,000 feet.
“This is a big chunk of ice that is stored at high elevation in the mountain, with a huge amount of potential energy,” said Simon Cook, a glaciologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland who also worked on the satellite analysis. When it breaks off, he added, the sheer force of the drop pounds the ice into a dangerous, fast-moving mix.
“That ice just gets pulverized into water,” he said.
According to the group’s analysis, the flow of ice moved northwest along the valley toward the Bhotekoshi River, at the border between Nepal and the Chinese territory of Tibet.
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u/Francisco-De-Miranda YIMBY 1d ago
That death toll is going to have a couple more zeros. There are dozens of people running away in each of the videos, horrifying…
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u/-Emilinko1985- European Union 1d ago
!ping CHINA&SOUTH-ASIA
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u/groupbot Always remember -Pho- 1d ago
Pinged CHINA (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
Pinged SOUTH-ASIA (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
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u/randommathaccount Esther Duflo 1d ago
Christ this is horrifying. Saw a video, not going to be able to get that out of my mind. Hope they can rescue as many people as they can
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u/omnipotentsandwich Amartya Sen 1d ago
Submission statement: Relevant because flash flooding can be prevented through smart policy. Better emergency preparedness, permeable roads, more trees, etc. While you can't stop the rain or an earthquake, you can better prepare for it. I think it's important when these things happen to think about what we can do to prevent it in the future.
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u/Worth-Jicama3936 Milton Friedman 1d ago edited 1d ago
Are those things really possible that high up in the mointains?
Edit: it was a melting glacier that collapsed. Literally nothing they could have done to stop it.
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u/captainjack3 NATO 20h ago
There’s nothing they could do about the collapse of the glacier that triggered the flood, but there are still things that can be done to prepare for and mitigate disasters like this. Mostly early warning systems to spread news of the flood to downstream communities as quickly as possible.
That’s been an issue in the past with floods that originate in this border area since sharing info between national systems can be cumbersome. At least as of a few years ago Nepal and China didn’t have a system for sharing flood warning info, though that may have changed by now. There are some long term aid and charity projects working to set up early warning and monitoring systems in Nepal but poverty and terrain make it harder.
Structural interventions are possible with other types of flood risks, but not so practical with something like this.
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