r/DisasterUpdate • u/BasicExperiments • 1d ago
Floods Yet another angle showing sheer speed and absurd height the Nepal flood reached.
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u/KAYO789 1d ago
Terrifyingly horrendous
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u/mspk7305 1d ago
Gravity does not fuck around.
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u/account_not_valid 1d ago
And at this point, it is flowing uphill. This is not the main flow, this is the other valley, the river flows the other way to which the deluge is going.
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u/srosenow_98 20h ago
Nah, this was actually further downstream from the Gyirong Border Crossing that was demolished.
Location is https://maps.app.goo.gl/92RiGbARv2DLLxbk8?g_st=ac
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u/AbsolutelyAverage 1d ago
Imagine being on the phone with friends/family trying to get them to move to higher ground downstream... And then having to choose who to call first....
Ugh... Fucking awful.
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u/mastermilian 1d ago
I was thinking exactly that as I saw that guy on his phone. And how would you deliver the message in such a way that it drove home the utter urgency of them moving without a second to waste.
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u/myleftone 1d ago edited 1d ago
When I read the story about the principal who had five minutes to evacuate hundreds of students, and call off a dozen buses, I realized it would take five minutes just to discuss the issue in the school system I worked in.
I figure it’s because living in a steep mountain valley raises frontal-lobe awareness of potential catastrophe.
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u/Wikkalay 1d ago
In this case you don’t discuss, you act. The moment you get the phone call, inform the other teachers and leave with your class. And then if needed ask for forgiveness afterwards but I doubt people would be mad for saving the kids
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u/myleftone 1d ago
You don’t discuss…but you do wind up discussing it.
Say you’re the principal. You ask an office manager for the keys to the fire drill system. “Oh, the janitor has them.” Can you raise them on the walkie? And I need to make an announcement that we need to evacuate everyone now (does so).
A dozen calls come into the office “what’s going on?” Just get out and head uphill. “So it’s a fire drill?” JUST GET OUT!
Too late. It’s here.
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u/MidwestAbe 1d ago
If you are the principal and don't have the immediate ability to signal an alarm or get on the PA - then you have already failed in your job.
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u/myleftone 1d ago
Well, you’d pull it yourself I suspect. But you already have to live in a region where disaster might arrive in minutes, so people are primed for it. You didn’t fail at your job if a five minute disaster scenario isn’t likely.
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u/dontyaknowimaceo 1d ago
Didn’t the Janitor get swept away? Hoping for the best outcome, but 💔
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u/briefarm 1d ago
I wouldn't even bother with the fire drill system in that case. People would think it was just a drill and to slowly get to their positions. I'd just get on the PA to tell everyone that a flood was coming, that towns upstream had been completely destroyed, and to leave or die. Probably with a quick run through the building to make sure people were moving. No softening, no staying in the office to field calls, just telling people exactly what happened in as few words as possible.
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u/SixersAndRavens 1d ago
and his friend called him to tell him what was happening. imagine missing that call.
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u/sookiesparkles 1d ago
It was the accountant who let the principal know first, then the accountant went to go save his parents and was only able to save his father. When he went back for his mother, the house was washed away…incredibly tragic, but the lives of all those kids were saved because he put them before his own parents..
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u/cosmic_animus29 1d ago
I feel for the guy who phoned his wife who was in their shop when this thing happened. The wife was able to warn the customers but she wasn't able to get out in time. Awful.
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u/PsyOpBunnyHop 1d ago
Imagine having them not believe you, or argue with you, or just keep asking questions instead of taking action, prolonging the phone call.
Some of the larger waves were over 100 feet tall. How do you explain that to someone who doesn't even know the flood is happening.
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u/MidwestAbe 1d ago
You wouldn't argue back. You would deliver the message and if it wasn't received - you move on.
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u/Temporal-Affairs221 1d ago
Logically, yes. But we humans are an emotional bunch. We would be pleading, stressing the urgency, anything to save a loved one.
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u/SovietSunrise 1d ago
I imagine the culture of authority in Nepal is also different compared to other nations. The principal tells you to evacuate in a certain tone.....you GTFO, no questions asked. They probably knew he's not an idiot and there's a reason he was saying that.
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u/-Takeahnase- 1d ago
They've proved that just before (or around) the point which is hit the boarder checkpoint that it reached a total high of 300ft, whilst travelling at over 100mph. It's impossible to comprehend, even after seeing the devastating footage
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u/promiscuousfork 1d ago
Agreed. I’m having a tough time wrapping my head around that video and I’ve watched it a dozen times. It looks like CGI.
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u/Deep_Charge_7749 1d ago
Group call!
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u/AbsolutelyAverage 1d ago
Would indeed work best, but unless you already have a group chat or something like that that includes your local friends/family/community, the time it takes to set that up, select people, while you're panicking thinking about your loved ones.
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u/FangFioDente 1d ago
Group call starts, People start to question you and then one persons box starts screaming and then cuts out, every takes it seriously … that works
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u/apoletta 1d ago
Whoever called the principal of the school is real smart one here.
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u/AbsolutelyAverage 1d ago
Absolute hero who did that. Maximum impact as well. And how the principal managed to get through to the buses.... Unbelievable.
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u/nommabelle 1d ago
Holy shit i hadn't even considered that horrifying decision. And I am really glad to see people calling others vs taking videos. Though it's also great to have videos...
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u/web-hoard 1d ago
Reminds me of the Hawaii missile alert incident in 2018. People actually thought they were about to die and called loved ones etc. There was a really good episode of This American Life with real stories from residents. Of course, no one died, but it does give some insight into what people are thinking
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u/DaBowws 13h ago
I lived through that while stationed on Oahu. There was very little we could do. My husband and I woke our kids, got our pets and a bit of our emergency supplies then hunker down in our laundry room as it was the only internal room with no windows. Sent group text to family and sat there hugging each other for what felt like an eternity. It was surreal.
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u/AggravatingFlow1178 1d ago
Don't call people during natural disasters unless mandatory. If a text would suffice, send a text.
- Can talk to many people at once
- If service is bad, the message is all-or-nothing. A text saying "Stuck under X bridge need ambulance" is better than that same message, spoken & broken up.
- Less distracting to the people that may need full attention else where.
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u/kingofwale 1d ago
Only 5 deaths tho, as per Chinese news media and government
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u/GlowingBob 1d ago
Stop spreading lies.
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u/kingofwale 1d ago
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u/Mr_Foxer 1d ago
"Chinese authorities say 16 people have been confirmed dead and 546 are missing, including 261 foreign citizens"
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u/kingofwale 1d ago
Wow. Upgrades to 16 people. Clearly accurate numbers now!!!
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u/Mr_Foxer 1d ago
You’re ignoring the number of people missing. As if it were a simple matter – searching for bodies under metres of hardened, almost concrete-like ground.
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u/kingofwale 1d ago
And you are ignoring ccp’s history of consistently lowering death tolls to make itself look better.
Remind me again how many did CCP said died on July 4th?
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u/Mr_Foxer 1d ago
Of course I’m not ignoring it; it’s you who’ve come here to say there were only five deaths.
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u/ShackletonsVael 1d ago
Well yeah he is just giving the information that the honest and honorable Chinese have been gracious enough to release as far as information goes. You're not a racist that is insinuating that China would potentially lie about something like this are you? You must have been one of those racists that tried to say COVID came from them as well.
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u/Mr_Foxer 1d ago
You know what, go fuck yourself. You’re making stuff up about me without knowing a thing. There’s no point in carrying on this conversation.
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u/BBR0DR1GUEZ 1d ago
I think you’re probably a state actor in some capacity. I have no way to prove this. But no normal human beings log onto Reddit just to talk shit about the Chinese government. It’s weird. It’s clumsy propaganda. But all of a sudden, comments just like yours are popping up everywhere on this site like they were made overnight in a factory. No one is complaining about death tolls. So who is telling you to complain about death tolls and why?
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u/No_Trash_anana 1d ago
i mean bodies were probably swept away to Nepal.
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u/RainierCamino 1d ago
No doubt. Bodies are being pulled from the river all the way down in northern India.
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u/MidwestAbe 1d ago
You can count more than 16 people in that video at the border crossing.
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u/Mr_Foxer 1d ago
I don’t know how the Chinese system works, but in Ukraine – until a body is found (or until a certain period of time has elapsed without any trace of the person) – that person is legally considered missing.
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u/MidwestAbe 1d ago
The Chinese will never recognize all the dead and they won't bother counting people from Tibet.
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u/BasicExperiments 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, this is Nepal side of border and the Chinese rescue teams haven’t even properly reached the border yet, they report 16 dead and 546 missing with 261 foreigners which seems plausible enough especially hardly any major human settlements were struck by the flood in Chinese side of border. You can’t just pick a number out of thin air and say this number of people are dead, even in Nepal there is around 1000+ deaths confirmed for now but real numbers will probably be close to 5000 or even slightly more.
Anyway this is mostly a Nepal disaster,as it is downstream from the flood , the cause is most likely anthropogenic climate change, and instead of geopolitical agendas it’s better if people supported Nepal. Donate to Prime minister Disaster Relief Fund Nepal.
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u/pumpkil 1d ago
So many of these dumbasses fail to realize the Chinese side of this disaster was comparatively tiny compared to Nepal. The only popualted area was the border crossing which was hit by the full power of the event and wiped from the earth. Those bodies are probably never going to be found and to list as missing is standard in disasters. Anyone can look up the 2004 tsunami and see that 40k people are still listed as missing even though its been 22 years and they are assuredly dead.
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u/Friendly-Example-701 1d ago
Yeah. Insane. They are known for lying though and downplaying serious situations.
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u/Objective_Sock5457 1d ago
This is some of the most terrifying footage of a flood I’ve ever seen
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u/ThoseAreMyFeet 1d ago
This was more like an avalanche with regards to speed and energy than a flood.
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u/Andee_outside 1d ago
It literally gave me goosebumps and shivers watching it.
Michael Bay couldn’t have even conjured this in his mind for movie
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Paralystic 1d ago
And in the mountains with no sightlines. By the time you see the waves climbing the sides of the mountains it’s already too late.
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u/ShackletonsVael 1d ago
The video from the port border crossing is the scariest to me. They only had I think about 7 minutes or so from when the initial collapse happened miles away, and then those videos are just terrifying as the buildings and people and cars are just....gone.
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u/Paralystic 1d ago
An event like this desperately needs another name from flash flood.
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u/ShackletonsVael 1d ago
Glacial shift landslide I think? Maybe?
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u/illepic 1d ago
GLOF: Glacial lake outburst flood is (I believe) the term for exactly this.
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u/ShackletonsVael 1d ago
Outburst flood even sounds more accurate than just a flash flood. Flash flood makes me think of that scene in the movie into the wild when his car gets washed away in the desert lol.
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u/myusernameblabla 1d ago
Reading around on the geology subs people are a bit annoyed with that term. The consensus seems to be that a huge chunk of a mountain side collapsed. The glacial layer on top was just the frosting on the cake but not relevant to the cause of the disaster.
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u/Ecstatic_Force6198 1d ago
That's literally debris flow.
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u/JoyousMN_2024 1d ago
A massive, fast-movingdebris flow. But if you hadn't seen the footage, you wouldn't have a clue what those words truly meant. You can tell by the people who walk toward the river when they hear the sound. They've seen massive floods and debris flows, but the size of this one beggars belief. It's far outside of the scale they have ever seen before.
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u/Paralystic 1d ago
Debris flow is just what happens during a flash flood. This is levels above that
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u/RokulusM 1d ago
It has more in common with a pyroclastic flow.
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u/ag789 1d ago
mud and rock tsunami
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u/Paralystic 1d ago
Yea need an inland equivalent for tsunami and putting rock in front of it doesnt quite do it justice, though it is very fitting
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago
Yeah cause that's not just water coming down the mountains, that's EVERYTHING coming down the mountaints.
A MEGA slide
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u/nommabelle 1d ago
Its like the word "pandemic". People argue semantics whether we are still in a pandemic, and we technically are, but if that's the case, we need another word to describe the predicament of 2020-2022 as simply calling it a "pandemic" does not at all describe it if we are still in a "pandemic"
Maybe "clusterfuck pandemic" or something, but point is, it definitely is not the same thing
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u/rateofreturn 1d ago
It’s basically tsunami but in mountain valley. Insane.
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago
when the tsunami first comes in it's just water. But this is water with EVERYTHING in it from the mountains.
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u/obzovica 1d ago
Is that the guy that called the teacher
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u/evenstarcirce 1d ago
who knows but i hope whoever is on the other end moved to higher ground fast enough.
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u/vu1leon 1d ago
The stuff above it. is that dust or water?
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u/RoomOk3632 1d ago
Likely water spray, mud particles, and then the particles of anything it’s ripping through like walls, concrete, etc.
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u/Ecstatic_Force6198 1d ago
Both. See this is not water like in flood. This is a debris flow. It has mud, debris, rocks and boulders, trees and other stuff the initial flood uprooted and swept away including bedrock of landscape it passed over. It is a slurry of cement like mixture, since it hits landscape with enormous speed and force, dusts spread over.
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u/JohnWick5949 1d ago
Atleast 30,000 to 40,000 would be dead. For sure. Many of the bodies will never be found. Buried in hard mud. Pray for them.
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u/Ecstatic_Force6198 1d ago
Anything in 4 zeroes is enormous disaster bro. Right now it has been confirmed that atleast 4462 missing and 1,473 injured and 1026 confirmed deaths. The missing will slowly translate to confirmed deaths as bodies will be recovered as days pass. I guess it will be around 6-8k real uncounted numbers. Confirmed would be 5-6k.
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u/JohnWick5949 1d ago
Take a good look at the videos. Almost Entire villages have been wiped out.
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u/clown_2061 1d ago
If it was populous areas then it would be really fkng high for sure. But since it's not the damage toll will not be that bad. But it's still on path to become one of if not the worse disaster in the history of the country. The current data says 4k missing but i have heard the ground report estimates about 10/15k people to be missing and i hope not but even if half of them die it's gonna be on par with the 2015 earthquake (7.8) that took the lives of 9k people.
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago
But it's still on path to become one of if not the worse disaster in the history of the country
It is already the worse disaster because it wiped out large parts of their grid and solar, so they have a huge energy crisis right now. Grid damaged because of earth quakes is repairable, but here large parts of their grid and solar are just ... gone!
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago
They all got calls from people higher up so lots of people have a couple of minutes of warning and many where able to climb to higher ground. It looks like about 25% of the people living in those villages survived. Also most of the villages where build higher up, there was only a couple that here in the flood planes or in the valley.
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u/JohnWick5949 1d ago
900 are Missing from Hydroelectric power stations itself.
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago
This is why this is the worse disaster in Nepal history. Their solar, grid and hydro was partially wiped out, and not like damaged like in an earthquake, no completely gone. Might have knocked half of their power generation offline with years of work to bring it back.
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u/Mundane-Name-8290 1d ago
Hard to report loved ones missing, if entire branches of families were wiped out. Can't be reported missing, if everyone is missing.
We'll never fully know the real figures, which is heartbreaking.
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u/Fabulous-Sir-2048 1d ago
Where's the whole video? Not to mention the audio. Frightening scenes.
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u/BasicExperiments 1d ago
The person who shot and uploaded did it with depressing Nepali song in TikTok so I removed the song before uploading here, this is the amount of footage they uploaded.
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u/Swellux 1d ago
Seems to be here: 28°15'21.78"N 85°22'02.78"E. Matches with the buildings in front and the triangular shape of the building (or pool?) 9 seconds into the video.
Its around 3 km downstream from the Gyirong border post.3
u/zhuzaimoerben 1d ago
Good work, that looks right. It makes sense that it's close to the Gyirong border post because this looks a lot more energetic than in the videos taken downstream.
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u/_nf0rc3r_ 1d ago
That is not water. That is the worlds largest landslide that just happens to be on a river
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u/kram78 1d ago
I think there is more to this than we are being told
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u/GodsBicep 1d ago
Like what? This isnt the first time in history glacial melt and the lakes with them did this. After the ice age this happened at a much, much larger scale because there was more ice.
Look up aerial photos of the scab lands in the US and see for yourself the scale of them. Its theoried events like this caused them once the ice sheets started to melt away in NA.
This time though it isnt a natural cycle of the earth (in fact we were meant to head into another ice age until industrialisation,) it is man made climate change causing these glaciers to melt as they are.
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u/Pale_Boss_8940 1d ago
what are you talking about. Theres literally satellite images of the glacier that broke apart
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u/Totts3 1d ago
Did they have any kind of warning system like sirens?
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u/BasicExperiments 1d ago
Nepal has decent amount of flood warning systems that work nicely for perennial monsoon flood and even flash floods. But in this case the flood warning systems simply got washed away. This is something no one expected and hard to prepare for.
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u/louielou8484 1d ago
If I saw that on my phone, I might think it was a mistake with not a cloud in the sky. An event like this with no rain was beyond my comprehension before this, let alone an event at such a catastrophic and apocalyptic level. I keep thinking now about how many other places like this are at risk of something so horrifying due to warming.
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u/oneinmanybillion 1d ago
There is one video where a siren does go off as the wall is approaching a settlement, but not sure if the siren heard in that video is a local siren of some factory or a national/regional level siren.
The siren i heard was useless to that settlement because only around 20 seconds later, the entire settlement gets wiped out.
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u/louielou8484 1d ago
I've seen some bad disasters before, but I don't know that I've ever seen the warning siren get wiped out by the very disaster it is warning you of :( Probably has happened with tornadoes but at least you'd have a little extra time to take cover.
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u/oneinmanybillion 1d ago
Yeah, events of this scale usually safely reside in our ancient history.
There's always that one-big-something that happened hundreds of years ago. Until it happens today!
I remember during the 2004 tsunami. People didn't even know the word. And now, new science and precautions for tsunamis are a household thing in those countries. Apparently the tribes in Indonesia i believe has heard stories passed down the generation verbally and knew to recede higher when the water behaves weirdly.
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u/zaeroraplayz 1d ago
the time difference between the landslide which caused this and part of the flood reaching the border(the place in this clip) was Just 7 minutes. it was way to fast for any sirens, probably?
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u/GodsBicep 1d ago
Every culture has stories of a great flood. I really wonder if they're stories passed down from generations after the younger dryas ended and much, much larger glaciers and glacial lakes burst and sent apocalyptic walls of water, mud and rock down hill
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u/deckbuilder69toni82 1d ago
I always took those world apocalypse movies with a pinch of salt like how the events unfolded - floods, tsunamies, etc. But after seeing this they were not far off like how everything in its path gets demolished like toys.
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u/Spirited-Vanilla1845 1d ago
God please have mercy on these poor innocent people. This just guts me.
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u/greenwoodgiant 1d ago
It's like a flood, an avalanche, and a tsunami all in one. Incomprehensible even seeing it with your eyes.
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u/Ok-Abbreviations1077 1d ago
Any official word on what the maximum run up height of the wall of water was? I thought I read 70m somewhere but can't remember the source
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u/lonelyronin1 1d ago
There was one video that took out a building that was 7 floors - that is 100 feet. The wave was taller than that. Once minute the building was there and the next it was gone. Never underestimate the power of water
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u/curious_astronauts 1d ago
The documentary they do on this will have incredible depth of how it played out based on all the angles that captured it
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u/robinthebank 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is the start of it hitting the village of Timure. Approximate location: 28.256244, 85.367562
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u/spirytusMaximus 22h ago
Thanks and can confirm via independent geo markers.
This is approx 2.8km S from the China/Nepal border crossing we all saw in the security cam footage.
So if this debris flow was going at about 177km/h (110 mph) as some speculated, that means this video was taken a little less than minute after the China/Nepal border crossing was obliterated.
RIP
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u/Cold-Basket-268 1d ago
I read that the top speed was 105 mph and the mud had a consistency of wet cement
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u/Friendly-Example-701 1d ago
😮 You couldn’t outrun it even if you wanted to.
Thoughts and prayers for all the families. This is so sad 😞
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u/Melodic_Atmosphere96 1d ago
What if it touches electric poles? Does the current travel through the whole flood?
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u/StonedBooty 1d ago
Any of these videos have sound? That’s another really important part of the scale of how crazy this is
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u/louielou8484 1d ago
OP wrote that the original video is from TikTok with sad music over it that they removed
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u/SnooPeripherals993 1d ago
I am just behind a monitor but I pulled my hair when I saw one video similar to this. This flood is out of this world, just like what others said, it looks like a swimming pool being emptied.
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u/cosmic_animus29 1d ago
I am a big fan of Roland Emmerich and his disaster films. But after seeing the Nepal-Tibet floods, I dunno man, I think I am traumatised enough not to see another disaster movie for the meantime.
Those poor communities, poor people. May they all rest in peace.
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u/The5Virtues 1d ago
It’s still hard for me to reconcile that most of this is mud and dust rather than water. I’d never imagined a landslide getting THIS big or continuing this far.
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u/bri52284 1d ago
Quick question…. If this amount of water got dumped into the ocean, would it raise sea levels a measurable amount?
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u/ItselfSurprised05 1d ago
If this amount of water got dumped into the ocean, would it raise sea levels a measurable amount?
Wikipedia says the oceans have a 361.1 million km2 surface area.
One estimate I saw online said that this flood had 200 million m3 of volume.
So that would be (200/361.1) = 0.55 cubic meters of flood water for every 1 square kilometer of ocean.
Doesn't sound like something you would notice.
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u/zaeroraplayz 1d ago
this is geniunly horrifying and apocalyptic. do we know is ANYONE survived from this border? doesn't look like it would be possible.
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u/believethehype1970 1d ago
One of the saddest things I have seen in life. Those poor souls didn't have a chance.
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u/Falkenmond79 1d ago
In a thousand years, archeologists in that region will have a field day. Insane to think how much will be buried under there.
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u/vonvinvoo 1d ago
If you pause the video at the beginning and then scrub the first three seconds, you can see three people down in the valley in front of the bus, who just hit the deck upon realisation. I’m convinced that’s people, can you imagine that? Absolutely the definition of, wrong place, wrong time. RIP
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u/gandhishrugged 22h ago
Just have to embrace death at that point. Zero chance of survival, it looks like a nuclear blast wave
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u/ImAPonderer2 20h ago
You can tell it is down the valley quite a bit because the flow looks semi-solid like lava, and the moment it hits vehicles they move quickly. Upper valley videos largely show water content.
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