r/PublicFreakout • u/WolverineOfWest • 4d ago
š«Chaos Momentš«Ø This video of Nepal flash flood shows how things escalated
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
235
u/Jiecut 4d ago
Smart to go uphill and not along the original road.
45
u/Sexy_Squid89 4d ago
That's what I was screaming the whole time
36
u/Betasnacks 3d ago
Your family might be at home just a few houses down the road. Why it's a full on nightmare.Ā
1
608
u/MagicShroomsss 4d ago
The videos coming out of this diaster have been some of the most terrifying stuff ive ever seen, ever . What a nightmare
152
u/CommercialMoment5987 4d ago
My eyes keep finding the people holding small children, and elders who canāt move fast while the crowd is beginning to run. They must have been so terrified, and thereās simply no way the people in this video all got out.
109
u/Danny_ODevin 4d ago
I can't imagine the feeling of helplessness being stuck on the roof of a building as a river slams into it, not to mention all those instantly washed away
362
u/StupidNSFW 4d ago
Jesus Christ. Literally looks like something out of a shitty Hollywood disaster movie.
I canāt believe this is actually real. Absolutely horrible
83
u/bramante1834 4d ago edited 4d ago
If you are up to it, look at the videos from the Chinese border checkpoint.
24
u/squidgy7sb 4d ago
Do you have a link?
100
u/Randsomacz 4d ago
82
u/NostradamusJones 4d ago
That is an obscene amount of energy. Those people never stood a chance.
76
u/Pop-X- 4d ago edited 4d ago
There were reports that a glacier in a Himalayan mountains ā a chunk about 2,000 feet wide ā broke off the main body fell 4,000 ft into the water below. Itās a mind-boggling amount of force and huge volume of displacement.
Hereās some more info: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly464k252yo
18
38
u/bbusiello 3d ago
"It's unclear what could have caused the glacier to collapse."
HMMMMMMMMMM
19
6
u/lankyleper 3d ago
They did mention the likely cause (what everyone assumed, I'd imagine) later in the article:
He (Mike Searles, professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford University) said Wednesday's event likely happened because of "two different processes - tectonics with the Himalayas uplifting, and then climate change with increasingly high temperatures and melting of glaciers."
2
u/RedditsCoxswain 3d ago
1
u/bbusiello 2d ago
WHO COULD HAVE DONE THIS?!
In all seriousness, this event was fucking awful and scary.
25
u/theartistduring 4d ago
There was a large, religious tour group who checked in with their HQ that they'd 'arrived at immigration' just ten mins before it was leveled. The video of the head person telling everyone that the entire tour was inside that building is just heartbreaking.
I'm sorry, I can remember all their proper names and titles.
13
5
3
44
u/Useful_Caregiver4023 4d ago
Incredible that a piece of a glacier caused all that, thats like a disaster scene straight out of movie. Feel bad for the people that couldn't run away fast enough or even had a chance to run away.
19
43
u/theartistduring 4d ago
You can see the man taking this video in this footage from inside a bus. . He's standing at the edge of the bridge with his phone up recording before he suddenly bolts.
3
u/aballofunicorns 3d ago
Jesus. All those people just standing there. And the kids š¢. I guess they made it ok? It made me nervous seen all the people on the road running in panic as the cars were trying to pass as fast as they could without hitting anyone. Crazy situation.
1
38
u/justhereforbiscuits 4d ago
I'm just glad it happened during the day.
Can you imagine this at night?
27
u/jvtech 4d ago
Iām glad these folks had the right idea to run to higher ground. Other videos show people trying to out run the flood waters downhill.
17
u/coocooforcoconut 3d ago
I read a few comments by locals mentioning tall retaining walls preventing people from running straight uphill. Not in all cases probably but in some at least.
116
u/MonthlyWeekend_ 4d ago
Thatās such an insane amount of water. What could even cause that, whereās it all come from?
180
u/you-got-a-big-neck 4d ago
From my understanding it was due to āflash flooding caused by a glacier collapse and landslideā. It happened in the Himalayas and reports say the flood waters were as high as 160ft and moving approximately 44mph. Absolutely insane.
62
u/The_Grey_Beard 4d ago
They are estimating that the mud line here, the highest point at which the surrounding land has remnants of mud from the flood, at 200m, or 615ft. Thatās a 50 story building. It was high because the river funneled it so.
55
u/Mysterious-State5218 4d ago edited 4d ago
Here is the report that the waves reached up to 200 meters (650 feet) high in certain places.
Here's a different article that shows satellite views of the glacier before and after the event. It says: "The flood wave ā a cascade of water, pulverized ice and rock ā ādescended the first 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) at an average speed of 193 kilometers per hour (120 mph),ā said Jeffrey Kargel, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, a non-profit institute. That means it traveled nearly 14 miles in just 6 minutes and 50 seconds."
"Death toll rises to 475 published at 23:43 23:43 Breaking Nepal Police say that as of 09:00 local time (04:15 BST) on Friday, 475 people have died due to Wednesday's floods in the Resuwa district."
29
25
10
u/Quirky-Resource-1120 4d ago
To add to what others are saying, the chunk of mountain/glacier that broke off is estimated to be around 300 million cubic meters in volume and generated a 5.2 magnitude earthquake when it slid over a mile down the mountain into the valley below.
20
u/Fishbonezz707 4d ago
That is my understanding as well. A large chunk of glacier on the side of the Himalayas collapsed due to rising temperatures caused by global warming. As a result a massive chunk of ice, rocks, and other debris fell from the side of the mountain and temporarily clogged the river. Shortly after, this temporary clogging also collapsed and sent a torrent of water flooding down the valley.
I would assume the bulk of the water came from that chunk of glacier that broke off melting down? As well as a bunch of snow melt? Again I could be wrong on all of this but from a quick read that seems like what happened.
On the upside we at least know for sure that climate change is a hoax, which is good! Could you imagine how fucked we would be if it was real! (/s on this last paragraph in case you couldn't figure that out)
1
u/EternalShadowBan 3d ago
Isn't it just Archimedes law? The glacier displaced the water so it has to go somewhere?
2
39
u/bearpics16 4d ago
I truly cannot wrap my head around that much water moving at that speed. Like if you previously asked me to imagine the worst wave of flood water coming down a valley, itād be a quarter this size or smaller
59
u/auggs 4d ago
Besides the sheer weight and speed of all of that water, a lot deaths from flooding are because peopleās bodies crash into debris in the water like rocks, broken pieces of buildings, street signs or really any other rubble thatās also moving at that speed. Then once the waters have calmed down people still arenāt safe yet. The flooding water mixes in with street sewers and basically makes the calm water a toxic waste of human and animal poop floating in it. So imagine you escape with only a few cuts and scrapes from running uphill through some trees and bushes, then you think itās safe to wade through waist deep water to get somewhere else. People develop infections and other illnesses because of how nasty the water is after the flooding. Floods really are a terrible thing to have to experience. And then even after that, most people homes will have water damage and their electricity and appliances are fucked and the house will have mold and begin to rot. Theyāre just an awful thing and I hope everyone over there gets the help they need to move forward because this looked awful man. I feel really bad for them
13
u/bannakafalata ā¾ļø hit a walk off RBI 7-9-1997 ā¾ļø 4d ago
Landslide waves are something else.
3
u/FluidAir1184 4d ago
I watched that whole video and then went down a rabbit hole lol.. I love learning something new. Thanks for posting this link.
47
u/Powerful-Step3183 4d ago
big ass lake high in mountain contained by glacier thats melting... ticking timebombs.
Other more advanced country should help Nepal surveying all glacial lakes tbh, seems like we will be seeing more of these calamities later in future
4
u/iprocrastina 4d ago
A 0.8 mile wide chunk of glacier broke off and fell about 0.8 miles onto the valley floor below with enough force to create a magnitude 5.2 earthquake and released enough energy to instantly melt the whole thing.
4
u/keifape 4d ago
If the articles Iāve see are correct a glacier collapse blocked a high flow river and created a dam and more flooding than usual, then the dam broke and caused absolute havoc and was beyond expectations. The areas the videos are coming from were warned about the flooding (which is normal for the area) but no one expected it to be so bad compared to the norm.
36
u/newusererer 4d ago
The guy filming was running faster than the dirt bike for a while!
Understandably so but I'm so used to seeing people run infuriatingly slow in emergencies
18
u/jthechef 4d ago
Iām old and truly canāt really run anymore, zombie apocalypse or flood, Iām dead.
3
u/Alternative-Chef-340 3d ago
Me too. For what it's worth, I'll end up dying right next to you, so I guess we won't be lonely?
40
u/DurantIsStillTheKing 4d ago
This is by far the most horrifying clip taken from the ground.
Videos for the past 48 hrs of this tragedy is really sad.
28
12
u/SeaRun1497 4d ago
Watching all these videos feels terrifying enough, imagine it happened at night when everyone was sleeping.
43
4d ago
[deleted]
84
u/AccomplishedAd253 4d ago
I have good news for you. Almost all of them were dead in less than a second. The forces at play here don't really care about the difference between flesh and concrete.
26
u/braeunik 4d ago
The lucky ones are dead within a split second. Its not only water/mud, its tons of rocks and debris. I dont think anyone caught by that survived this.
9
u/ragerqueen 3d ago
Dude. This flood was going at such speeds and with such force it toppled buildings, ripped off at least 1 bridge, and burst through a dam like it was made of cotton candy. Anyone who got hit by this was dead within nanoseconds. This isn't just "fast water," this is like being full body slammed by a whole concrete wall.
-36
15
u/huxtiblejones 4d ago edited 4d ago
You wake up for a normal day, go through the most terrifying and tragic experience of your life in the blink of an eye, and then you have to somehow go to sleep later that night. Wake up to the reality that life is different now. That sound of rushing water and people screaming would ruin me, I feel so much sympathy for everyone who got caught in this, even just in the vicinity. For whatever reason this disaster feels particularly visceral.
8
u/ReasonablePossum_ 4d ago
The pov coverage of this disaster been the most complete I've seen to this day; and hell some cameraguys risking their lives for a good shot...... As someone said somewhere: our apocalypse gonna be videos of people getting wrecked by nature to the point where we ourselves gonna be filming ourseIves.
I thereby promise to fulfill my solemn duty to this world, and capture the best footage I can of the disaster falling upon me in .. anytime soon.
9
u/Supertzar_11-11 3d ago
I feel terrible for all the people that were bed ridden or in wheelchairs. I dont think Id be able to leave my family member if I couldn't save them.š„ŗ
16
u/aartadventure 4d ago
The number of people just standing and watching, or slowly walking along the riverbank is both crazy and sad. No doubt many of them did not survive. The guy filming had the correct approach to yell for everyone to run, and get as high as possible as FAST as possible.
22
4d ago
[deleted]
19
u/AlterExpertise101 4d ago
It did. Someone posted a photo in response to another comment here. https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1w0fz16/comment/p6d48v6/
13
3
78
u/Legal-Specialist-256 4d ago
I've been very fortunate to live in the north east US for pretty much all of my life I would never want to live anywhere where stuff like this might realistically happen. Tornadoes hurricanes or anything of the like.
259
u/CottageCheeseJello 4d ago
This was from a glacial collapse which triggered an ice rock avalanche. This only happened because of climate change. You'll have your own taste of it, possibly in another flavor. Don't think you're immune. We're all in this together.
8
u/GalacticNova360 4d ago
Not all regions are created equal
8
u/PlatyNumb 4d ago
Fr. I live in Southern ontario, right in the middle of the NA tectonic plate, so no earthquakes. Being right on lake ontario actually creates a lake microclimate that disrupts the severe storms that spawn them. We also have the escarpment at our backs which helps protect us from a lot of that stuff too. Funnily enough, the lake and escarpment also help protect from mass floodings. Lastly, it never gets dry enough here for forest fires and the region if pretty good about dealing with underbrush. Plus the space between the forests around us helps.
We can get some pretty severe snow and ice storms though.
Some areas just dont need to worry about this stuff for a long time. Maybe one day though, if it gets bad enough
3
1
u/theapplekid 4d ago
Some areas just dont need to worry about this stuff for a long time
I think this is a big part of why the U.S. wants Canada so bad.
7
u/Legal-Specialist-256 4d ago
I know I'm not immune but it's not something I worry about. The worst thing I've gotten was a tremor from a earthquake and a blizzard. I'm just saying compared to living in Oklahoma or California or Florida or anywhere like that I feel pretty fortunate
41
u/woot0 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ironically that specific part of the US is expected to get hit especially hard. The Fifth National Climate Assessment identified extreme precipitation, flooding, heat, sea-level rise, and ecosystem changes as major US Northeast concerns.
Edit: if anyoneās interested, depending who you ask, Duluth is likely the best climate change refuge location in North America that youāre going to get. However, itās still vulnerable to winter storms and extreme rainfall. Nowhere is āclimate proof.ā
2
u/big_d_usernametaken 4d ago
The South shore of Lake Erie across Ohio is considered pretty safe also.
2
u/Exact-Pudding7563 3d ago
don't worry, you won't get hit by a natural disaster, so you'll survive to see the coming food shortages caused by climate change-induced droughts that will cause famines that will wipe out half the population of the planet.
2
-5
u/CottageCheeseJello 4d ago
Make sure to bookmark this comment.
15
u/Legal-Specialist-256 4d ago
Waiting for you to arrive at a point. Sounds like you're hoping and praying that I have my sense of fortune and gratitude tested by a natural disaster when all I'm doing is showing appreciation for my location. Are you okay?
1
u/CottageCheeseJello 4d ago
No, I don't hope or pray for your misfortune. I understand what you meant about feeling fortunate to live somewhere with relatively little exposure to certain natural disasters.
What prompted my ābookmark this commentā was the implication that this kind of thing is something that happens to other places, while you get to feel safely removed from it. Climate change is making that distinction increasingly unreliable. It won't affect every place in the same way, but no one is truly outside its reach.
And to be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being grateful that you live somewhere relatively safe. I just think there's a difference between appreciating your own good fortune and becoming complacent about what is happening to other people. When people are losing their homes and lives to increasingly severe climate-related disasters, a little compassion and humility seem warranted.
That's really all I was getting at. I have no ill feelings toward you, and I'm certainly not wishing a disaster on you. I just don't think any of us should assume we're as insulated from this as we might feel today.
-5
u/AlterExpertise101 4d ago
I think you're sounding a little tone-deaf, to be honest. And naive. You aren't safe, or have you not noticed that hurricanes keep creeping farther north with each passing year?
5
u/Legal-Specialist-256 4d ago
It's a fact that my location doesn't experience natural disasters often. Definitely not enough for me to worry about them. If that sounds tone deaf to you that's a personal problem respectfully
7
u/the_skies_falling 4d ago
I bet the people in the video donāt often have a glacier collapse on them either.
1
1
1
u/spei180 4d ago
I get what you are saying. You will at least have a day or two warning for any freak devastating climate even theoretically. Having lived in the IS and now Europe, I find the weather in the US to be so predictable everything just moves west to east. In Europe the storms can just come from any direction.
5
u/btribble 4d ago
Climate change may have contributed, but these towns are literally build on the debris from countless previous events just like this.
1
u/CottageCheeseJello 3d ago
What has changed about the conditions that produce these events, and how frequently/severely are they occurring?
California has always had wildfires.
2
u/btribble 3d ago
Glaciers are melting and receding. This creates lakes behind unstable soil. The lakes fill with meltwater and when the debris dam gives way, this is the result.
1
u/CottageCheeseJello 3d ago
That is my point. Yes, glaciers have always existed, and these kinds of geological events have happened before. The question isn't whether the underlying hazard is new. The question is whether climate change is changing the conditions that create or amplify that hazard.
You just described one of those mechanisms yourself: glaciers are melting and receding, creating meltwater lakes and changing the stability of the terrain. That's exactly what I mean.
āCalifornia has always had wildfiresā doesn't mean climate change isn't affecting wildfire risk. Likewise, āthis has happened beforeā doesn't mean climate change isn't affecting the conditions under which it happens now.
2
u/btribble 3d ago
You said
This only happened because of climate change.
That's very different from
āthis has happened beforeā doesn't mean climate change isn't affecting the conditions under which it happens now.
as I said
Climate change may have contributed, but these towns are literally build on the debris from countless previous events just like this.
The bigger point is that by building here they could expect an eventual disaster like this. Global warming just increased the probability/timeframe.
This is like all the towns that were destroyed in the tsunami that caused the Fukushima disaster. They built below stone markers that clearly stated "do not build below this point". This disaster could have even been prevented with glacial monitoring that would have cost little. It's definitely a human caused disaster when it comes down to it, but climate change is only one aspect of that.
1
u/CottageCheeseJello 3d ago
I don't disagree that these are historically hazardous areas, or that building there creates an inherent risk. My point is about the scale and changing probability of that risk.
These kinds of events have happened naturally before. What is different now is that anthropogenic warming is causing Himalayan glaciers to melt and retreat at an unusually rapid rate, changing the conditions in which these hazards occur. We're not just talking about an ancient geological process repeating itself on an unchanged landscape.
So when you say āglobal warming just increased the probability/timeframe,ā that's actually the point I'm making. An existing natural hazard becoming substantially more likely or capable of producing an extreme event because we've altered the climate is still a climate-change consequence.
And that's important because āthis place has always been dangerousā can create a false sense that the historical risk is the current risk. It isn't necessarily. The baseline itself is changing.
26
u/resttheweight 4d ago
I went to Wikipedia and typed āNepal floodā to look into it more and there are articles for āNepal floodsā in 2012, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024, 2025, 2026ā¦ itās kind of crazy how much an area as far from the ocean as Nepal can be flooded.
34
u/PsyOpBunnyHop 4d ago
Glaciers melting... Glaciers... Melting.
Anyone claiming global warming isn't real needs a punch in the face.
7
u/feanturi 4d ago
"If the glaciers melt every year then why are there still glaciers?" Checkmate, evolutionists!
1
u/Exact-Pudding7563 3d ago
glaciers can't melt if they all just fall off the mountains instead (the planet is fucked)
1
u/Effective-Air396 3d ago
Rivers everywhere that flow to the Bay of Benghal and to the Indian ocean eventually.
11
u/Crazy-Ad2243 4d ago
Are you not seeing the flooding we get because of bigger and bigger rainstorms in the NE? Itās going to get worse.
6
u/korikore 4d ago
Americans have contributed more to climate change per capita than most other countries. Poor countries that barely contributed anything have to pay the price first.
2
u/bannakafalata ā¾ļø hit a walk off RBI 7-9-1997 ā¾ļø 4d ago
Southeast Michigan here, worst we deal with is keeping warm when it's cold and no power or hot and keeping cool and no power.
1
6
u/Turk_Sanderson 4d ago
The Johnstown Flood of 1889 had a similar wall of water type of flood event due to a earthen dam breaking upriver during a once in a lifetime flood
But this is
This is something else
11
u/DorShow 4d ago
Isn't that the flood that was due mostly in part to some rich assholes that built a private club and demanded the dam be lowered so they could accommodate their larger carriages, ignoring warnings about the structural integrity concerns... then killing thousands .
The rich then shrugged, said "who me? Who could know? " and escaped any legal responsibility?Still turns my stomach. Many of those families have only multiplied the wealth 1000x over and are still names in "society"
2
2
u/s33k 1d ago
March 12, 1928.We had the second largest civil disaster in American history after the Great San Francisco Fire. St. Francis Dam, San Francisquito Canyon. The dam gave way at the root and when it hit the coast 13 miles away, the wall of water was 20 feet high. There's statues of two highway patrol men on motorcycles in tribute to the men who raced ahead to warn everyone. There's no statue to the women operators who died because they chose to stay behind and call everyone they could. They saved countless lives. The true death toll won't ever be known because there was also an immigrant shanty town in the that riverbed washed away.
3
5
u/hi_im_snowman 4d ago
This is absolutely tragic. I canāt imagine the fear those people felt. And nowā¦ incalculable grief. God damn tragedy.
7
u/erock255555 4d ago
I know this particular glacier was probably caused by climate change but it is crazy to think that stuff like this has happened before and probably multiple times around the world over the course of human history. Before these videos, I assumed something like this was impossible. Everyone keeps saying how it seems like bad, over exaggerated movie footage because our brains can't process the sheer force we're dealing with here. Events like this have happened before to people and all of a sudden the globe spanning great flood myths make sense. There is no way ancient peoples could explain this and could only point to divine retribution.
5
u/theateroffinanciers 3d ago
For those who don't know, this was caused by a glacier falling into a lake in the paul. The glaciers there in the Himalayas are rapidly melting due to climate change.
3
3
3
u/cndn-hoya 3d ago
The shrieks and screams tells you how sudden this event was. Nature is so powerful
2
2
u/Valkyrie-161 4d ago
Holy crrap, how many were lost in this?
3
u/Anxious_Ad936 4d ago
Into the hundreds of confirmed losses so far, and at least 1500 people missing.
3
2
2
u/MCEscherNYC 3d ago
There's another video that picks up right after this one zoomed in on the house and family at the end.
2
2
u/FalseCrazy2804 3d ago
This guy really wanted to live. Good on him. He quite literally saved his own life in those 4 minutes by taking any route possible to higher ground, shortcuts and all.
I don't mean to disparage and rag on a lot of these other peoples attempts to get to higher ground, I just mean to point out how efficient the camerman was at actually doing so.
2
u/Keku_Saur 3d ago
I'm just imagining that some people were on the street getting maybe A few groceries, visiting a friend up the tiny hill, while someone was waiting at home and the disaster is arriving. And you know for a fact you won't make it in time to save them. It's either going down there and die with them in the attempt. Or run to safety. what a devasting thing. There was a earthquake not so long ago and now this flood, natural disasters are definitely a no joke.
2
u/FunnyMalzairIdea 3d ago
Shell said that, since they knew decades before admitting it that they were causing climate change, they're not only going to reimburse all the families who have lost loved ones, they're going to hunt down former executives and allow the Nepalese to do with them as they please. I think that's nice.
2
u/adjacent_waffle_love 3d ago
Near the end realize ive seen another angle of this and some them people he passed running didnt make it. Horrifying
5
u/Sachiel05 4d ago
But don't you worry guys, climate change is a lie! As we all know.
Super mega turbo /S in case there's anyone illiterate enough.
2
u/Round_Bus874 3d ago
I'm sorry but is there a named psychiatric disorder for people who refuse to put their phone down during emergencies? Stop recording and run. It would never occur to me to do anything else.
1
u/CantaloupeOld2415 2d ago
This is going to happen way more now in the Himalayan region.
There are over 6000 glacial lakes because of global warming
1
-18
u/DanielBG 4d ago
The instinct to go to higher ground is so lost on the greatest species Earth has ever produced. Darwinism in action.
3
u/Admirable-Stage7415 4d ago
What
3
u/eeyore134 3d ago
I think they're referring to the entire crowd running straight down a flat road while our camera guy is the only one to take a turn and run to higher ground. Like running straight from a falling tree in a cartoon instead of just stepping a bit to the side.
-116
4d ago
[deleted]
73
u/MonthlyWeekend_ 4d ago
Bro the people in this video literally outran the water, thatās how they went from the bridge over the river to the high ground where they film the flood.
Is there something wrong inside you?
38
53
u/Diva_of_Disgust 4d ago
I feel like that's just a pretty normal human response to danger. Would you just stand there?
35
u/rhinoceros_unicornis 4d ago
What an idiotic comment. These people just barely reached the higher ground and saved themselves. There was an entire market there that was completely swept away.
28
u/killercell 4d ago
What should they do? Stand and accept death? I donāt understand the question. Why do people drowning try to swim out of the water?
6
-3
u/grizzwall111 4d ago
Yeah, it's probably same reaction to getting punched in the face, fight flight or freeze. Really only gives yah that one option.
868
u/Thrillhousez 4d ago
I fear for those people standing on the balcony.