A Massive 20 Billion Liters Unleashed... A 600-Meter-Wide Glacier Collapses

[Anchor]

The disaster that suddenly struck the border between Nepal and Chinese Tibet was caused by a massive chunk of glacier breaking off from the Himalayas. A staggering water bomb of 20 billion liters poured down into the canyon, and it is analyzed that the water level of the torrent reached up to 50 meters at the time.

Reporter Kwon Min-kyu has the details.

[Reporter]

This catastrophic flood began in the high-altitude Himalayan region of the Rasuwa district in northern Nepal.

According to satellite image analysis by a research team at the University of Calgary in Canada, the point where the glacier collapsed is located at an altitude of 5,000 meters above sea level.

The width of the detached glacier is estimated to be about 600 meters.

The glacier chunk dropped 1,200 meters, dragging down rocks and soil from the mountain along with it.

It initially blocked the river flow halfway up the mountain, but due to the heat and impact of the collapsing glacier and rocks, the ice melted rapidly and eventually burst through, rushing down into the narrow valley all at once.

According to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, the speed of the water current at the time reached 70 kilometers per hour.

The flood level was estimated to be a massive 50 meters.

The Nepal Flood Forecasting Division stated that this landslide unleashed 20 million cubic meters, or 20 billion liters, of a water bomb into the canyon.

This is an amount equivalent to filling 8,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The resulting torrent swallowed the Rasuwagadhi border checkpoint located 20 kilometers away from the landslide origin and swept down through the canyon to villages 60 kilometers away.

Furthermore, because it was a debris flow mixed with rocks, soil, and water, analysis shows that a destructive flow with high energy was created.

The deeply carved V-shaped canyon terrain is also cited as a factor that magnified the damage.

As the rapids concentrated into the narrow waterway, the flow velocity and water level increased further, causing water and soil to rush in up to tens of kilometers away.

Consequently, several villages and markets formed along the riverbanks were entirely swept away.

[Song Young-seok / Head of Geological Disaster Research Center, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources: If the width of the glacier is 600 meters, imagine a dam height of generally about 200 to 300 meters. Just imagine that dam collapsing all at once. If a dam like the Soyanggang Dam were to collapse all at once, you can imagine how immense that power would be.]

During the 2015 Nepal earthquake, which resulted in about 8,900 deaths, the high mountainous terrain and canyons also led to heavy casualties, such as Everest climbers losing their lives in avalanches.

(Video Editing: Lee Seung-yeol, Design: Lee Jun-ho, Choi Jae-young)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.