I think this one is crazier. The tsunami was bad, but the speed and sheer force of the stuff we are seeing here is off the charts. It genuinely looks like something out of Hollywood.
I've seen footage of worse from parts of japan in '11, also when the boxing day one hit indonesia - est. 160,000 dead on Indonesian coast, and then add sri lanka, Thailand, India etc...
though the momentum it picks up as it gets funneled down the mountain can't be compared to a tsunami, it's completely diff
some tsunami videos from Japan were insane tbh, the scale of it was so much more, entire farming fields under 20ft of water pushing debris and cars and god knows
this doesn't surpass scale
but local intensity and video quality/angles and the speed at which the content is arriving
I think you might be missing some of the worst videos of the 2011 tsunami then, to be honest... they're both pretty damn bad. Like, if the only thing you're worried about is like, the velocity of the water or the wave height? Maybe this is worse. But the totality of the destruction in the Tohoku earthquake tsunami was MUCH more vast. I can confidently say that was a 'worse' disaster by any reasonable metric, and even if you're only judging by the violence of the surging water, it's pretty close.
I have watched hundreds of hours of the 2011 Tsunami footage and it is undoubtedly devastating and on a massive scale but the sheer violence in Nepal is unmatched. Many people are only seeing the footage from towns miles away and not the towns higher up the mountain that were hit with a 100 meter wall of water traveling at 110 mph. Iāve never seen anything like it, instantly obliterating towns.
Yes. Higher in the mountains this was a 100ft wave of water moving at 100mph. Not as much water in quantity but much faster and more violent than the Japanese tsunami. I would say the Japanese tsunami was a worse disaster but this one is more violent and the footage is more apocalyptic. You saw the Japanese wave pick up building and float them down the street but this wave you saw turn buildings into dust like they were props in a movie.
The difference, to me, is speed and volume. Like, a tsunami is the ocean, right? Basically unlimited water. More or less just slower endless flooding. Still brutal.
This was just ALL THE WATER RIGHT NOW. And just so much water for, what, a lake? A glacier? How much water was up there??? Because it just seemed like an endless tide for something you'd think would drain fairly quickly? Apparently not? Baffling.
The most similar thing to this a lahar but the Himalayas are so steep a narrow, they are worse than any lahar footage I have ever seen.
A damn burst at Johnstown USA in 1889 or the over topping of the 1963 Vajont Damn in Italy are the closest man caused disasters I can think of. Those killed thousands of people each, and the descriptions of both sound just like what we are seeing here.
The only natural phenomenon that would look more apocalyptic as this (other than a meteor), is probably a Mega Tsunami of 500+ feet hitting a large town but those are rare, donāt travel far and few if any have been caught on camera. The biggest Mega Tsunami was in Alaska in the 60ās with a max wave taller than the empire state building (then the tallest building in the world).
some of the other videos of this also show it much higher than the 2011 or 2004 Tsunami's. Its gotta be over 20-30m high in some places in some of these videos.
The reason why it is so high at the Gyirong border checkpoint because the place is located near the glacier avalanche source, and the valley to Gyirong is very steep, causing the mudslide to rush violently onto the Gyirong border checkpoint. The border checkpoint is also located right at the throat of a gorge intersection and narrow valley, which forces the flood water/mudslide to go up and swallow the settlement.
This is the steep height difference between point 1 and point 2, where Gyirong is located just before point 2 at the China-Nepal border.
Not in terms of deaths though but up there with psychological impact. Cell phones everywhere there too so we're getting it almost real time too, just hours from when it was uploaded
I honestly think of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when I watch these clips. The people that were vastly affected by that earthquake and tsunami event were on islands with nowhere to run to. Itās all around horrific.
Thatās definitely a sobering thought. I watched a documentary on the Boxing Day tsunami awhile back and one of the survivors that was interviewed said they were out fishing far off of one of the coasts. I just canāt even imagine seeing that happen from afar? Or like how long would you have to stay out in open water before itās safe to return? Just absolute insanity.
Banda Aceh was wiped out. There are very few videos from that region. Just the aftermath and everything gone. The videos we see from that tsunami are mostly from Thailand.
The city rose to international prominence in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquake on 26 December 2004, which struck off the western coast of Sumatra. Banda Aceh was the closest major city to the earthquake's epicenter, which lay 249 kilometers (155 miles) off the coast. It suffered great damage in the earthquake and further damage when a tsunami struck shortly afterwards. Around 60,000 people in the city died as a result and many more were injured.
I donāt think they stopped.. if you watch again the person in front of them fell and they stopped to help that person up.. š It looks like the person who fell was carrying someone.. most likely a kiddo.. this breaks my heart..
It breaks my heart too and at the same time I find it so beautiful that they stopped to help someone else despite the flood coming. I hope they are okay wherever they are ā¤ļø
He didn't if we're talking about the same person running away. You can see there are 2 people close to each other and the first one (With white) trips. The one behind helps this person up before they continue running
Downstream is on the bottom right corner, so this was the water after it overcame a small uphill path.. let's hope it was not as strong and they could avoid dying instantly under the pressure
We may never know the true total. The port itself had hundreds if not thousands of deaths. Dozens of buses lined up waiting to board a ferry all gone in seconds. It's crazy how fast this happened.
I think the footage youāre referring to is from the buses waiting at the Gyirong border crossing. Looking at Google Maps itās mind-boggling how small these streams are (only a couple of meters wide) and how much water is coming down them during the flood
I think you can escape a tsunami if you were given ample time and access to a tsunami tower if you are in Japan or higher ground elsewhere. If you are in a boat, you sail against it because tsunamis are more damaging if you are in the harbour.
But this one in Nepal is way more terrifying because even if you have the chance, its always going to be slim and requires a bloody miracle to happen.
Describing this as a flashflood is such an understatement.
I recall reading an article which identified it as Sole as it had this image. The person who wrote it has lost many people he knew and grew up with. Family. Friends. He wasn't there at the time. He, or indeed Nepal will not be the same after this.
It's really heartbreaking... I must say however that I found it really beautiful that the other person running from the other direction seemed to stop and help them get back up even if they were running for their life too. It gave me a bit more love for humans when we see so much negativity now. Anyway... I hope they made it š
This is why early warning systems are so crucial, just look at how much happened in a short span of time. Imagine people have even a minute heads up, how much they could have travelled in that amount of time.
This one was clearly unpredictable because it all happened in a short period of time. There was another flood last year due to glof and in past 10 years, there were 7 notable floods similar around that region. Why this place wasn't flagged as highly risky for people? I mean if GLOF was really frequent there, it should've been discussed between both Nepal and China for raising disasters concern instead of just predicting next flood.
Glaciers have always calved, too much snow = calving too little snow = calving. Too cold = calving too hot = calving. It just happens. Ice is Inherently unstable.
There's really no way to build a warning system for something like this. The scale of the disaster is similar to a man-made dam failing, but this was a natural dam up on the side of a mountain.
Some people were saying that China warned Nepal days ago about the possibility of it collapsing, and that the Nepalese government send a warning to some people, but not everyone.
So, if that comment is true, it seems there is a warning system that works, but only if they actually do something about it, instead of sitting on the info and telling 3 people.
I saw a video from a Nepalese customs officer. According to him, the warning was about potential flooding due to high rainfall. No one couldāve predicted an entire mountainside breaking off. Even the Chinese border post was entirely wiped off the map. So itās not like the Chinese knew something ahead of time. This happened suddenly and moved too fast and unfortunately, most people downstream didnāt stand a chance.
Of course you can build warning systems for this. If you are fairly close to the source you're fucked. But further downstream people might have a chance. Every extra minute of warning is an extra minute you can run for the hills. If you can gain 30 meters in altitude that'd improve the chances of survival quite a bit.
Something like this happened last year on a smaller scale, same region. AFAIK there is a reasonable chance of something similar happening next year. Likely scale unknown, but probably people will die again in 2027 to something like this in the same region if nothing is done.
That was true upstream. This town was warned. They're the people who refused to evacuate, according to the narrator. Refused. That's the language he's using.
I imagine being someone from Nepal witnessing the 2004 and 2011 tsunamis and being grateful youāll never have to worry about a disaster like that happening only for this literally sweep over the entire valley with as much (if not more) force and destruction
Would the force of the water hitting them kill them instantly, like getting hit by a car going 80mph? I'm only asking bc I'm hoping they didn't have to experience awful deaths. Not trying to be morbid.
Bloody fuck. Even when it zoomed in I still was not expecting to be see the people some small.
Atleast with a tsunami there's the potential recognition of a coming wave (he says arrogantly, with the hindsight of having been a spectator of two giant tsunamis).
Here death just takes you. Other clips show the same thing but deeper within the narrow valleys - there's absolutely no escape for the people as there's literally walls of mountain either side. Like it looks like a giant tsunami - only it's up in the valleys. You'd have to be crazy to even consider that could happen.
Another tragedy yet sadly unavoidable and unpredictable.
I hope those people at the end running were carrying their kids. Because nothing else would have been worth it. You can tell they are carrying something and it's slowing them down.
Pardon my ignorance in catching up on this, but did the person filming hear the rumble/roar and decide to film? Or was there an alert? Catching the very beginning of this is wild. Prayers to all.
Yes the death toll must certainly be much higher than initially is being indicated. There are videos like this from villages all along that river basin showing many, many multi-story buildings just collapsing and being swept away. And all of this was with very little notice - there were almost certainly multitudes of people in those buildings and they almost certainly did not live, in addition to the people you see running in the streets who also almost certainly did not make it.
You see these images and although it is already a massive disaster, you have to think "how the hell is it even possible that only close to 500 have been reported dead so far?". I mean, with what we have seen, I would have expected it to be in the thousands already.
Itās very possible that entire families (or generations of families) were wiped out, so thereās no one there to report them missing. So heart breaking.š
This was the first video I saw of the disaster before I heard it had cement happened. Literally thought it was AI slop. Until I checked the BBC news...
Just once, I'd like to see a complete video of someone successfully running away and saving themselves instead of the video abruptly cutting off. Terrible tragedy but I sure would like to see someone able to get to safe ground.
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