RUNNING WON’T HELP
By the time you see the mud flow coming, it is too late, said Sharif.
“Running will not help,” nor will trying to flee by vehicle, Sharif added, because the mud and water moving at high speed form a lethal combination “like liquid concrete”.
The only solution is to climb up a hill at least 6m high, he estimated.
One possible long-term remedy might be river level gauges that relay changes to authorities in real time, giving residents 20 to 30 minutes of warning, he said.
Dorothy Heinrich, a researcher at the United Kingdom’s University of Reading, told AFP: “In these mountain environments, the rivers can be quite narrow in areas.”
Anything that blocks them, be it an avalanche or landslide, will lead to a “big accumulation of water, then it creates these incredibly fast floods.”
Qianggong Zhang, head of climate and environmental risks at ICIMOD, warned of the potential for a second flood because of an ongoing blockage upstream.