A Sherpa village in Nepal’s Everest region has been swallowed up by icy floods, officials said.
Experts suspect that Thame, which is about 3,800m above sea level, was flooded after a glacial lake burst its banks. Scientists warn that climate change is causing many glaciers in the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate.
No casualties were reported, but more than a dozen buildings, including houses, a school and a clinic, were completely destroyed by Friday’s floods.
Tamu is the home of many Sherpa record holders, as well as Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the first person to climb Mount Everest with explorer Edmund Hillary.
Footage showed foamy, milky water rushing through villages, floodwaters turned brown by mud and debris.
About 15 houses were swept away and rescue teams were helping people to safety, Nepal Army spokesman Gaurav Kumar KC told AFP.
Local authorities said bad weather did not allow them to use helicopters during the investigation, adding that they planned to fly to the mountains on Saturday morning.
While the cause of the floods is still unclear, Arun Bhakta Shrestha, a climate change expert at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), said there were “indications” that they were the result of a glacial lake outburst. They are working to confirm this.
Scientists warn that Himalayan glaciers are melting due to climate change, forming glacial lakes that are often clogged with loose rock and debris, making them unstable and prone to bursting.
In recent decades, hundreds of glacial lakes formed by melting glaciers have popped up in the Himalayas. According to a 2020 ICIMOD report, Nepal recorded 2,070 such incidents, 21 of which were classified as “potentially dangerous”.
