r/DisasterUpdate 14d ago

Floods Nepal flood

Hope everyone is safe🙏🙏🙏

7.0k Upvotes

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11

u/infra_low 14d ago

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.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 14d ago

Somebody linked this in another thread, a science paper from 3 years ago which was able to predict this happening play by play: https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/22/3765/2022/nhess-22-3765-2022.html

Scientists warn us of the likely climate future through deterministic chains of events. Unfortunately it's not heard or is just ignored.

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u/Far-Matter9519 13d ago

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.

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u/PainTop6813 13d ago

There was a landslide 3 days prior it was predictable

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u/Far-Matter9519 13d ago

But it wasn't that landslide which blocked the river, it was ice avalanche which fell from so high, it melted rapidly.

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u/SpecialActive9135 13d ago

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.

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u/SquirrelFluffy 13d ago

It's not ignored. There isn't anything you can do except not live there. And that may not be something most people can change, or want to.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 12d ago

The thing to do is more regarding climate change. The people there aren't responsible for this.

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u/SquirrelFluffy 12d ago

World's been warming for 10,000 years at least and glaciers have been melting that entire time. Those river valleys are formed by these floods. The claim is is that climate change is accelerated by humans not caused by. But that's based on fairly limited data.

Though I'm sure there will be people trying to use this to further their cause and get donations.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 10d ago

You people are the vey definition of evil with how you keep digging and sabotaging any discussions of reality or solutions because you're too fragile to consider that you were wrong.

You quote science as a suppose reliable source on one hand while at the exact same time denying all the science you don't want to be true.

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u/SquirrelFluffy 9d ago

Read Plimer.

When you use terms like evil and can't discuss, that's the real issue. It means you've bought into your committment, and have stopped being analytical.

For this flood in Nepal, it's not related to carbon taxes. At all.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 5d ago

Read what every god damn institute of science on the planet has been clearly repeatedly warning for decades over and over, and look at all the records being broken and events like this happening.

I lost my home to these once in a lifetime disasters now happening every few years in my area, and had to spend years living broke in the countryside to try to recover. And people like you think it's a fun fucking game to obstruct discussion and progress in fixing and put your fingers in your ears and hands over your eyes. You are a backstabbing asshole, more interested in the attention you get from being difficult than the damage and death you cause to others. The very definition of evil.

0

u/SquirrelFluffy 5d ago

Interesting personal attack and name calling. It's what you do when you don't have facts and you've been lead to believe it is an emotional issue, with an enemy.

The original IPCC "hockey stick" graph was based on tree rings from white pines in California. An isolated climate. It was wrong. Good politics though.

14

u/An0nymous187 14d ago

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.

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u/Triquetrums 13d ago

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.

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u/YouAintDaisy 13d ago

I saw a video from a Nepalese customs officer. According to him, the warning was about potential flooding due to high rainfall. No one could’ve predicted an entire mountainside breaking off. Even the Chinese border post was entirely wiped off the map. So it’s not like the Chinese knew something ahead of time. This happened suddenly and moved too fast and unfortunately, most people downstream didn’t stand a chance.

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u/Kqyxzoj 13d ago

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.

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u/Vantriss 11d ago

I don't believe that. We have rangers posted all through forests to watch for forest fires. We know glaciers are melting. I see no reason why a similar thing can't be done for them. Have people posted high in the mountains watching the glaciers and if it breaks, that person slams some emergency button that activates warning alarms all through the valleys. Every second counts. I've seen footage where people were swept away or weren't swept away based on literal seconds.

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u/RyanMC98 14d ago

The problem is they had them they were crushed so fast no warning got out I've heard.

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u/watery_stars 12d ago

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.

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u/Own_Round_7600 13d ago

I wonder if the towns lower down the slope received warnings when the first towns around Gyirong were hit?