A massive flash flood destroyed infrastructure and may have killed hundreds near the Trishuli Bazaar area of the Nuwakot District in Bagmati Province of Nepal, not far from the capital city of Kathmandu.
CCTV videos showed a massive wall of water overtaking local infrastructure and slamming vehicles into walls as people ran for their lives.
Nepal’s Red Cross Secretary General Rishi Khanal said initial estimates are that at least 10,000 people and 20,000 homes were swept away during the flooding. The death toll is expected to continue to rise as search and rescue efforts continue.
What caused the deadly flooding in Nepal?
A glacial lake outburst above the Bhotekoshi River may have caused the flooding and destruction, Shailendra Thapa, a spokesman for the Armed Police Force, initially said, but AccuWeather meteorologists pointed to an earthquake in the area as the root cause.
“An earthquake in the area on Wednesday and a landslide of rocks and ice blocked the Lhende River and caused the cascading flooding in Nepal,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Jason Nicholls explained.
The USGS says the event itself was not an earthquake but was caused by an exceptionally powerful landslide, which was equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.
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“A team of international scientists believes a huge chunk of glacier sheared off and fell into the valley below,” CNN wrote.
However, that occurrence is not the same as a “glacial outburst” which killed 18 people in the area last year.
“So far, satellite imagery suggests that no major lakes are upstream of the flood path, indicating that a glacial lake outburst can be excluded,” a geomorphology professor at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany, told CNN.
Roads, bridges and communication and power lines leading to the port city were destroyed or cut off on the Chinese side. More than 500 tourists were reported missing, and at least 150 people were killed, BBC reported, though the intensity of the disaster dictated that the death toll would rise significantly.
BBC says today’s disaster is the worst since the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, which killed 9,000 people.
So far, the Nepal Army has rescued 88 people, with 115 rescues from the village of Mailung pending. China’s President Xi Jinping is urging an “all-out” search effort.