The stretch of the Himalaya along the Tibet-Nepal border where the 26 August disaster originated is exceptionally fragile. Only last year, on 8 July, a flood here killed 18 people. It destroyed the Nepal-Tibet Road, the check post at Rasuwagadhi, bridges, hydropower projects and transmission lines. There is no official account of what happened on the Tibetan side that year, though an advance warning did come from China.

This time, no such warning was possible. Perhaps no one expected such an event on a clear, rainless day. It happened so quickly that the information system could not respond in time. Yet the very next day, China informed Nepal that landslides had created two lakes on two tributaries of the Bhote Koshi, the Tushchen and Purepu, and advised Nepal to stay alert. There must also have been loss of life and great destruction of property in Tibet, though official information is still awaited.

Eleven years earlier, on 25 April 2015, Nepal was struck by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, the country’s biggest since 1934. More than 9,000 people were killed and over 22,000 injured across Nepal, India, China and Bangladesh. It also triggered an avalanche on Mt Langtang’s south face, burying 300 people in Langtang village.

As of 7 September, 1,400 lives have been lost this time — 1,357 in Nepal and 43 in Tibet. The destruction of property — offices, schools, roads, bridges, hydropower and solar-energy projects besides homes, shops, hotels, restaurants and cottage industry units as also community assets like temples, chortens, watermills and panchayat buildings — has been enormous. Nepal’s finance minister has estimated the losses at $4-5 billion.

More than 1,600 people from 32 countries, including 300 Indians, were reportedly still missing at the time of writing — over a thousand in Nepal and about 600 in Tibet. Human bodies were later seen floating in the Gandak in India.

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These numbers will inevitably swell as more information comes in. Most of those killed or uprooted were farmers, livestock-rearers and owners of small businesses. There were also many pilgrims and tourists in the region as thousands use this route every year to go to Kailas-Mansarovar and other pilgrimage sites. Animals and wildlife were also killed, and what happened to the fish is beyond our imagining.

The disaster would have caused less devastation had the development model in Tibet and Nepal been shaped by studies of the region’s geology, seismicity, geography and flood history. Governments refuse to learn or try to be too clever, and engineering does not adapt in step with a changing environment.

Within minutes, the flood destroyed 12 hydropower projects — eight operational, four under construction — besides 41 bridges, transmission lines, power substations, heavy machinery, bulldozers, trucks… A successful 25 MW solar project at Nuwakot was buried under debris. More than 100 km of highway was destroyed.

At the Trishuli hydropower project and in other tunnels, 917 workers, including 70 Indians, were left suspended between life and death. It is estimated that the river carried 100-200 million cubic metres of debris, mud, silt, trees, other material and machinery at a flow speed of 193 kmph!

Nepal must, of course, reflect on how to deal with the consequences of this disaster, what lessons to draw from it and what precautions to take in future. But what is really needed now is a broad dialogue among........

© National Herald