KATHMANDU — Nepal is on “high alert” for more floods as the hard-hit Himalayan border region turns into “swampland”.
Officials say more than 600 people have died and at least 2,426 people are missing following devastating flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday last week.
Emergency teams are warning that rain is making it difficult to reach some of the worst-affected areas.
Families of the missing – including hundreds of foreign nationals – are waiting for news on the whereabouts of their loved ones.
The Nepali foreign minister says authorities in Nepal and China were in discussions about establishing an early warning system in disaster-prone areas when the flood hit.
Shisir Khanal was asked in a news conference earlier whether there were plans to install early warning systems in at-risk areas, to which he answered: “We were in an active discussion process to establish this, but unfortunately this incident happened.”
Khanal has called on the world to embark on a “global effort” to tackle climate change.
In a press conference earlier, Khanal described his country as one of the lowest contributors to greenhouse emissions while being one of the biggest victims of global warming.
Asked whether the government was planning to investigate avalanches in the area to better understand the cause of the disaster, Khanal said the government planned to undertake further research, with a “joint mechanism” with Chinese researchers already in existence to better understand the changes to Himalayas.
“We’d ask the world… to take climate change as one of the major challenges that Nepal and its citizens face, and this has to be a global effort,” he said. “We request the global community to come together and preserve the Himalayan ecosystem.”
Preliminary investigations have pointed to a collapsed glacier as the cause of the flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border, highlighting the issue of rapidly melting Himalayan ice, scientists have told the BBC.
Initial reports of an earthquake led many to believe that a tremor had caused a landslide, which in turn caused the flood.
However, the US Geological Survey then clarified that the disaster was caused by a “glacial collapse”, which is when a glacier or part of a glacier disintegrates.
The impact of the collapsed glacier hitting the bottom of a valley was so powerful that it registered a magnitude of 5.2, according to USGS data and scientists who have analyzed the event.
Dr. Simon Cook, a glacier expert with the University of Dundee, told the BBC his team had detected that the lower part of a glacier in Nepal near the Langtang Lirung peak – which is approximately 15km (9 miles) west of the site of the floods – had collapsed.
He estimated that the glacier collapsed in a northwesterly direction and then travelled westwards downstream. (BBC)
