By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The water came down the valley with no warning, witnesses said, and it did not stop for villages.
A glacial collapse high in the Himalayas triggered a catastrophic flash flood along the Nepal-Tibet border this week, killing at least 165 people and sweeping away entire populated areas, according to Nepali and Chinese officials. Nearly 1,500 people remain missing, authorities said Thursday — the majority of them tourists, including trekkers and pilgrims from India, the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada drawn to a region long popular for its mountain routes.
Rescue teams are working through the wreckage of villages that officials say were simply erased by the surge. The death toll, standing at 165 as of the latest count, is expected to climb as search crews reach more remote areas cut off by the flooding.
Officials have not yet given a full accounting of how the glacial collapse occurred or whether warming temperatures played a role, though such collapses are consistent with patterns scientists have documented in a warming Himalayan range. Governments with citizens in the region — India, the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada among them — have not released final counts of their missing nationals.
For now, the numbers are moving targets: a death toll that officials themselves say will rise, and a missing list that dwarfs it. What is certain is scale — a disaster that hit a mountain corridor built for foot traffic and small villages, with no infrastructure suited to catastrophe on this order.
Search and rescue operations continue.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE -
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera and The Guardian.
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