So far, at least 200 people are reported missing with 19 confirmed dead. News broke Monday of a massive wall of water that came rushing down the Himalayas in northern India, sweeping away two dams on the way downstream like they weren’t even there. A piece of glacier holding the water back broke free.
News of the disaster
News of this disaster is still developing but what we know already is that first responders reported 150 missing almost instantly in the Indian state of Uttarakhand on Sunday.
Teams worked furiously through the night to locate survivors and recover bodies. The incident happened along India’s border with Tibet.
The state’s ranking official, Trivendra Singh Rawat, announced in a tweet “Our rescue operations are in full swing and we are hoping to save more lives.”
A major effort was launched to “remove people trapped inside two tunnels that were blocked with debris,” the police told news reporters. They managed to bring 12 trapped workers from one of the tunnels and get them transported to a hospital for further treatment.
In the other tunnel, “at least 34 people remained trapped,” Raj Kumar Singh, Union Minister of Power and New and Renewable Energy told NBC news.
“Rescuers have been battling to reach them, but are facing a tough challenge because of the debris buildup.” The rescue teams are forced to battle through. They already made it “some 230 feet into the tunnel but had a further 590 feet to go.”
Military on the scene
News sources relate that over 2,000 members “of the military, paramilitary forces and police have been taking part in search-and-rescue operations.” At the same time, India’s Geological Survey officials started investigating “what caused the glacier to burst.”
They ” will send a team of experts into the area to look for possible causes.” Of course, the politicians are already blaming it on global warming. “researchers are pointing at climate change as a contributing factor in the glacier’s collapse.”
Anjal Prakash has been beating the warning drum for years. He was coordinating lead author of a 2018 special report by the U.N.’s climate body.
It noted that “climate change has altered the frequency and magnitude of the natural hazards in high mountain regions of the world.” As news of the disaster spreads around the world faster than covid, the experts are already jumping to unfounded conclusions.
NBC News wants the public to believe that “while data on the cause of the disaster was not yet available, ‘this looks very much like a climate change event as the glaciers are melting due to global warming.'” Dave Petley, professor of landslide science at U.K.’s University of Sheffield, is quick to agree.
“The cause of this is likely to be the impacts of warming,” he added. “The rock masses in the high mountains are stuck together with ice in cracks and fractures. As this ice thaws, the incidence of these events increases.” We’ll have “Waterworld” before you know it.
