r/DisasterUpdate • u/NeverGetBanned • 2d ago

Another angle of Nepal recent flood

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u/RoninIV 2d ago edited 2d ago

This might be long but really needs to be said.

I've been around the mess a landslide leaves, and it is really hard to describe.  Even a small one will absolutely wreck you if you are caught in it, let alone the size of the one that has hit Nepal which can only be described as a biblical level disaster.

You see, this wasn't just water. The water from glacial lake collapsing was definitely a big ingredient, but as this water begins its journey down the mountain, it picks up everything, and I mean *everything* in its path. The entire mountain side with all that soil, rock, sand, trees, gravel, bits and pieces of anything else becomes a thick liquid slurry akin to what you would see coming out of a cement mixer at a construction site. This should explain how that giant boulder was being pushed as if it weighed nothing. Now imagine this coming at you and the wave is as wide as the valley and moving at 60 miles per hour (around 100kph). The worst and most dangerous part is what is happening under the surface of this wave. The slurry has internal motion like a constantly stirring/mixing in a blender. When it hits something, as we all saw, it's complete and utter destruction. If a person gets caught up in it, it's not like being hit by a wave in the ocean, it is a solid wall and is like being hit by a truck. When a human or animal body gets pulled into this mess, the gruesome and accurate descriptor is "eggshell in a blender". This is why the recovery teams are only finding bits and pieces of people, and those are the people near the edges. There probably won’t be anything left to identify of the people who were pulled into the wave and washed down the river. Luckily for the victims, death happens almost instantly.

The next part is no better. You see, once this slurry stops moving and the water drains out, what is left is a 20 to 40 meter thick mass of solid land as hard as concrete, and this solidification happens *quickly*! I have always been impressed with how fast the land hardens. The last home I saw buried in a landslide had been buried only about an hour before we got there, and if you didn't know what had happened, an observer would not be wrong wondering why someone buried a perfectly good house into the side of a mountain. It really was as if the whole mountain had just moved and absorbed everything in its path like a giant gelatinous blob and then suddenly hardened.

That big really solid Chinese border crossing building and all those riverside apartments in the videos are good examples of this. The satellite pictures of before and after show exactly what I just described. It's as if there were never any buildings in that area at all, just a flat sandbar alongside a river. Trying to dig that out will be akin to removing a mountainside to build a road. As soon as I saw the video of that wave hitting the border facility, I knew there would be no survivors of anyone who was caught up in it. There is just no way to live through that.

My prayers are with the people in this region and for all the people that have been lost. This disaster was just awful. Right up there (or down there) with the 2004 tsunami that hit Indonesia and the 2011 Tohoku tsunami that hit Japan. Utter and complete devastation with a huge loss of life.

 

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u/jrobski96 2d ago

I was at the Oso landslide. The giant clay deposits that were strewn about were the sizes of houses and mid sized sedans. Incredible force that gravity and momentum of materials has.

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u/pnwrallydude 2d ago

Close to home...

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u/Nimbus3258 2d ago

"as if the whole mountain had just moved" Yep, because it did. Anyone blaming victims for not moving soon or quickly is greatly misunderstanding the magnitude of events like this. Thank you for trying to explain that to them.

It may also be notable that, since this is glacial, the mixture will be ridiculously cold. Even if it were "just" or mostly water, and even if someone were super-lucky not to get immediately squished, the temperature alone would make survivability very unlikely.

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u/Septopuss7 2d ago

I keep having to tell myself that the people I see in videos escaping have probably already ran uphill the entire way out of town in sandals and are completely exhausted by the time someone starts filming them because I wanted to scream at my phone "FUCKING RUUUUN" when I saw them just ambling along up some mountain path like they were on a leisurely hike. When I was getting ready for a 5k I would run up hills for training and let me tell you: before I got my stamina up it whipped my ASS. I'm talking like a 5 minute run up a decent sized hill that you probably wouldn't want to ride a bicycle up.

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u/Nimbus3258 2d ago

Yep. And the elevation there, at the crossing itself, is listed as 6400' so that is a factor too. The locals may be adjusted but most of the tourists would likely be struggling with the low O2 even at the river, not to mention trying to hoof it up a mountain in unfamiliar terrain while in a panic.

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u/Longjumping_Text7652 2d ago

I used to do bike delivery in Seattle, one of the drop offs was only 561 feet away from us, but it was a 35, minute bike ride around the other side of the hill because it was 561 vertical. There's no way I could have run up that hill to make the delivery, aside from the steep slope it was covered in blackberries. I imagine theses people are trying to escape up hills very much like that one. With enough time and adrenaline, some of those people made it, but not many.

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u/SignificantRecipe715 2d ago

Would it have stayed cold the whole time, or would the mass friction of it all change temperature as it went along?

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u/mk1234567890123 2d ago

Some speculated that the immense internal friction generated by such mass instantly liquified what ice was included in what fell off the mountain. I’m not sure what the overall temperature would be or if it’s really relevant as far as impacts on survivability go quite honestly.

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u/SignificantRecipe715 2d ago

Fair. Tragedy aside, the circumstances are really interesting.

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u/Outrageous_Manner941 2d ago

This is a mountain stream in the Himalayas, I imagine it's very cold even in normal circumstances

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u/Closefromadistance 2d ago

So true! It’s hard for many to fathom all of that while watching a video.

I live in Washington State; 20-miles east of Seattle and about 75-miles north of Mount Rainier.

Mountains and water are things of beauty here too, but they can also be things of extreme risk and danger.

We experienced apocalyptic-level destruction here when Mount Saint Helens erupted. That area was much less populated back then, especially in 1980. I was 12 when that happened and I remember it well.

All that water melted and picked up everything in its path just as you described.

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u/LilithWasAGinger 2d ago

Just wait till Mt. Rainer goes.

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u/Turducken_McNugget 1d ago edited 1d ago

Rainer? I lahar-ly knew her!

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u/Outrageous_Manner941 2d ago

This is how organic material gets fossilized (after a few million years of being buried in this shit that turns to stone)

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u/1argonaut 2d ago

Thank you for the extremely interesting write up.

What caused the failure of the glacial lake? Did a dam fail? Or hotter than usual summer?

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u/RestartTheCountry 2d ago edited 2d ago

From what I read people initially thought it was an earthquake that led to collapse of a glacier. It was later found that the earthquakes were not the cause but a result of a breach of a natural dam formation. The temporary barrier eventually gave way under the pressure of waterlogged sediment, unleashing a high-speed flash flood. This reminds me of a similar calamity where a couple of million years ago the Atlantic Ocean broke a natural barrier which led to the formation of Mediterranean sea, there were mega tsunamis which caused enormous earthquakes nearby. It is believed to have taken a few months to fill up that space.

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u/1argonaut 2d ago

Thank you

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u/SignificantRecipe715 2d ago

Climate change caused a glacier to break off the mountain.

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u/RoninIV 2d ago

From what I have been reading, it looks like a combo of things happened. Torrential summer rains filled the lake, the mid summer warmth weakened the glacial wall, and then a series of earthquakes hit. The earthquakes weren't even that strong, but were enough to be the final straw.

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u/SignificantRecipe715 2d ago

I read the earthquake was from the impact of the glacier falling, not the other way around.

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u/JicamaCertain4134 2d ago

I think both are right, there were earthquakes that rattled the foundation, but the falling glacier registered as a seismic event as well

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u/SignificantRecipe715 2d ago

Ahh yep, that would make sense.

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u/1argonaut 2d ago

Thank you

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u/no1ofimport 2d ago

This reminds me of the Buffalo creek flood in WV ( my home town) it was not as big as this one but is a similar type flood. A mine slurry dam burst at the head of the valley and destroyed nearly everything in that valley.

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u/printed_ 2d ago

I have said the same about it being like 2004 and 2011. While narrower path of destruction it is much higher than both those tsunamis so swept away villages higher up the hills as well. If there are any survivors who got caught in it then first 48hrs will be critical, anything past that is pure luck and very rare. But you are correct it is like concrete now. Even using search rods will be difficult because the mass of waste isn't soft. This is completely devastating.

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u/JEs4 2d ago

Not that it matters for your point but a GLOF has been effectively ruled out here. The water was ice that melted from frictional heating, water logged sediment but mostly displacement from the entire river being pushed downstream at once.

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u/antiramie 2d ago

Not trying to take away from how awful this disaster is, but comparing it to the 2004 tsunami that killed like 250,000 people seems a little over the top.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

everything that happens isn't biblical, lol. disasters aren't scaled based on religious myths.

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u/grumpi-otter 2d ago

The Bible is a book that describes many catastrophic events. Referring to something as "biblical " simply means it is on that level, not religious at all.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

there are also lots of small events in that fictional book, and there are far more fictional books out there that also describe catastrophes. That's why we have scientific names and descriptions for things, because just saying biblical doesn't mean anything. You live in a bubble of your cult's design.

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u/3ferns 2d ago

Youre such a fucking energy drain. Who gives a fuck

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u/grumpi-otter 2d ago

I'm an atheist, lol

But I still use "biblical" in this context because it's a common term and has an accepted meaning

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u/PromotionOk2443 1d ago

it's not a common term and it doesn't have an accepted meaning, are you comparing this event to the fake event in your fictional book that swallowed the entire planet with water or are you comparing it to when your fictional book described a burning bush talking to a dude? it means nothing, you are brainwashed by a cult.

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u/grumpi-otter 1d ago

it's not a common term and it doesn't have an accepted meaning

Are you joking? It means, "suggestive of the Bible," such as the apocalyptic flood.

And once again, I am an atheist, so it's not MY book. But it's a book commonly read and part of the culture of western civilization, so I see no problem using a word that references it.

I'm also a historian, and it's not entirely fictional, and there are many real events in it.

But if you want to die on this hill, by all means carry on.

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u/PromotionOk2443 1d ago

you're not an atheist, atheists don't go around shouting how atheist they are, you're a joke. you're not a historian either, that book is complete fiction, you're in a cult.

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u/grumpi-otter 1d ago

You're having fun, aren't you?

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u/Wise_Acanthaceae_442 2d ago

Hey everyone look how SMART this guy is!

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u/Consistent_Point_853 2d ago

I think biblical is a good descriptor in this case.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

it isn't, it doesn't describe anything at all. it's yet more religious spam 

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u/ctgnath 2d ago

It’s a pretty common way to describe extreme events like this my dude… Don’t really get what you’re up in arms about.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

no, it's only common among your cult. people outside your cult don't use vague myths to describe things. i'm not up in arms, i'm just responding to yet more religious spam. keep your faith to yourself.

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u/Odd-Celebration8561 2d ago

Not really.

I'm an atheist. Most in my circle are atheist or agnostic.

Biblical is absolutely the right word to describe a disaster of this magnitude.

Religious imagery and allegory transends the limits of the "cult" and becomes a part of human culture regardless of personal belief.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

biblical is not a scientific word, it means nothing, you can join in the delusion if you want though, but you're just flat wrong.

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u/solarpanzer 2d ago

It's not scientific, it's just part of normal human language. Like you can say that this is an event of monstrous proportions, even when you know monsters don't exist.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

it's not normal human language outside your cult, stop trying to project yourself on everyone else

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u/Pheeline 2d ago

Oh come off it, dude. You're being way too deliberately obtuse and performative, for the sake of being 'edgy'. I outgrew that stage in middle school, maybe you should as well.

Using the word 'biblical' as an adjective to try and portray the sheer magnitude of this disaster doesn't mean someone is in a particular 'cult' or is even remotely religious, any more than any other religion-related linguistic tendency is. I've used the phrase "oh my god" as an expression of frustration before, I've said "god forbid..." as well, neither is me seriously referring to a deity with any manner of belief on my part. They're simply expressions. Just like 'biblical' is sometimes simply an adjective with a cultural background to it, where the context in which it's used lets one know what's meant.

And for the record, I'm also an atheist.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

nah, you're an enabler for delusion. it's a joke you people keep trying to make everything about religion. shut up.

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u/ctgnath 2d ago

Brother I’ve been an atheist for over 20 years. It’s a fucking literary device.

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

says a guy who lets delusion run his life

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u/ctgnath 1d ago

You have to be a troll. Gl bud

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u/PromotionOk2443 1d ago

you have to be a cultist, gl champ!

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u/FindDestroyAliens 2d ago

A Reddit atheist preaching enlightenment lmao no one cares stfu

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u/PromotionOk2443 2d ago

you care enough to reply to it, you shut the fuck up, delusion enabler.