Swallowing the Entire Region... A '20 Billion-Liter' Water Bomb

[Anchor]

This disaster began when a massive chunk of glacier broke off from the Himalayas. Twenty billion liters of water poured down into the canyon, sweeping away the entire region.

Reporter Kwon Min-kyu has the details.

[Reporter]

This massive flood disaster began in the high-altitude Himalayan region of Rasuwa in northern Nepal.

According to satellite image analysis by a research team at the University of Calgary in Canada, the glacier collapse occurred 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 mass dropped 1,200 meters, dragging down rocks and soil from the mountain along with it.

It initially blocked the river stream on the mountainside, but due to the heat and impact of the collapsing glacier and rocks, the ice melted rapidly and eventually burst through, pouring down into the narrow valley all at once.

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

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

The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology in Nepal stated that this landslide unleashed a water bomb of 20 million cubic meters—equivalent to 20 billion liters—into the canyon.

That is enough to fill 8,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

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

Experts analyze that because it was a debris flow mixed with rocks, soil, and water, it created a destructive flow with high energy.

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

As the torrent concentrated into a narrow waterway, the flow velocity and water level increased further, sending water and soil surging to places dozens of kilometers away.

Consequently, several villages formed along the riversides and local markets were completely swept away.

[Song Young-seok / Head of Geological Disaster Research Center, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM): If you consider a glacier width of 600 meters, it is comparable to a dam with a height of generally around 200 to 300 meters collapsing all at once. Imagine a major dam like the Soyanggang Dam collapsing simultaneously; you can just 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, including 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.