Social media users have been actively sharing photos and videos since Wednesday showing water rushing through a valley. As it roars down, it carries everything in its path: mud, cars, bridges, even buildings. The landslide has killed many people – as of Friday, the powerful force has claimed at least half a thousand lives.
Lithuanians are reacting emotionally to these images – the word “horror” is repeated in the comments, some recall having been in visible locations, speculating that this should look like the end of the world.
This is the collapse of the glacier edge. A tongue about 1.5 km wide and about 1 km long practically fell off.
Some rushed to propose theories about what happened in the Himalayas. Scientists, who immediately reported that a huge piece of glacier could have broken off due to an earthquake, soon reversed everything – now it is considered that a strong collapse actually caused the underground shocks. At least a few Facebook users do not look for natural causes – they immediately blame people.
Such a discussion erupted under a Facebook user’s post, in which, more than a day later, some details of the disaster were laid out: that a large part of the glacier fell about 1,200 meters near the Nepal-Tibet border and caused an avalanche of ice and rocks. This blocked the river, the dam quickly burst, and a huge wave of water, mud, and debris rushed down the valley.
A 4-minute video was added to a few sentences, showing a powerful stream of dirty water boiling between the mountains. Some commentators were horrified by the mighty nature, while others wondered that “it suspiciously looks well prepared for filming, hard to believe no hands were involved,” “where are glaciers at this time of year.”
“I just want to curse what these experimenters have done!! Everyone tries all kinds of bombs, waves, various mills, heats, moves, and then such things happen all over the planet!! And some climate is to blame!! Trash,” expressed one internet user emotionally.
Others agreed with her: “Modern bastards can destroy everything, turn it to ashes” or specifically pointed out that “HAARP and DEW (direct energy weapon – editor’s note)” were used.
A member of one Facebook group listed even more, evaluating various processes as “depopulation by all means.”
“There was a video of a helicopter flying over the dam dropping a bomb and blowing up the dam. You just can’t tell if the image was made with AI (artificial intelligence – editor’s note) or real,” explained a commentator of another post.
Like an atomic bomb explosion
Experts quickly began sharing explanations of what might have happened in the mountains, though they did not immediately understand what most likely occurred.
On Wednesday at 8:37 a.m. local time, a huge part of the Himalayan glacier broke off. It slid down to the valley floor in Langtang National Park, about 60 km north of the capital Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border.
The force of the fall was so great that it was initially reported as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake. Professor Andrejus Spiridonovas, chief research fellow and geoscientist at Vilnius University (VU), recalled that shocks of the same strength were recorded in the Kaliningrad region in 2004, but they were felt even in Vilnius.
“You can imagine how much energy. This can be caused either by tectonic forces – earthquakes, or an atomic bomb explosion,” he said on Thursday on LRT television’s “Lithuanian Day” show.
Soon the US Geological Survey clarified that the shock was caused by the collapse of a glacier rock and ice mass, and its strength reached as much as 5.2 magnitude.
“On Wednesday, a colleague, examining satellite images, noticed that the lower part of the glacier near the flooded areas disappeared – this indicates that some kind of ice landslide or glacier collapse occurred,” BBC quoted Simon Cook, senior lecturer at the University of Dundee specializing in glacier research.
“I think some people thought it was an earthquake that caused the landslide, but our team includes a seismologist who is convinced that it was actually a collapsed glacier hitting the valley floor. This indicates a really huge scale of the event,” he added.
The collapse caused a huge surge of water, mud, rocks, and ice, which thundered down the valleys and the riverbeds of Lhende Khola, Bhotekoshi, and Trishuli rivers.
“Receiving the seismic signal, which showed how mechanical energy was dispersed, (seismologists) realized it was not an earthquake but a collapse,” A. Spiridonovas explained on “Lithuanian Day.” – This is the collapse of the glacier edge. A tongue about 1.5 km wide and about 1 km long practically fell off.
The force of the fall crushed that mass and it partially melted, turning into water. On the way, it took soaked soils that were around. It is now the rainy season, everything is soaked. This whole mass mobilized, a gigantic mudslide came out. A cubic kilometer of material, a billion tons, such a wave rolled down.”
Reminded of a similar tragedy
According to S. Cook interviewed by the BBC, similar events have occurred in recent years elsewhere – in the same Himalayas, Switzerland, and the Dolomite Mountains in Italy.
“When you look at the pattern of these events, it seems that climate change may have had an impact,” the scientist claimed.
According to him, global warming likely causes the thawing and degradation of permafrost, which partially holds together some mountain slopes. This “destabilizes these highland environments” and leads to more landslides, debris flows, glacial meltwater, lake breaches, and glacier collapses.
The Himalayas stretch across several South Asian countries, containing many of the world’s highest peaks and remaining glaciers. Steep slopes and lush valleys are especially vulnerable to floods and landslides, and extreme weather events – intense monsoons, melting glaciers – have become more frequent due to climate warming.
Earlier this year, researchers from Kathmandu found that glaciers throughout the Hindu Kush Himalayan region are melting faster, and the rate of ice loss has doubled since 2000.
The portal nepalitimes.com reminded that Langtang Lirung mountain – a majestic 7,245 m giant from which part of the glacier broke off – has a tragic history.
In April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook central Nepal triggered an avalanche on its southern slope. The avalanche slid onto a glacier below and buried the Langtang village. At least 300 people died.
Understand instantly
A dam burst in Tibet: Nepalese rescuers urged to retreat
The number of flood victims in Nepal has risen to 538
Experts who examined Planet Labs satellite images concluded that on Wednesday debris brought by the avalanche blocked the monsoon-flooded Lhende Khola river. The resulting reservoir soon burst, and a wall of mud and boulders rushed down the Trisuli river deep into Nepal.
Snow and ice on Langtang Lirung became unstable due to global warming. The disaster occurred at the end of the monsoon season, when a lot of snow accumulates on the slopes, and due to glacier retreat, the remaining moraines, previously fixed in permafrost, were already saturated with water.
“The Himalayas are one of the most active mountain ranges in the world,” explained A. Spiridonovas. There, weathering and erosion are very fast, so the valleys are very steep. The mass does not spread evenly to the sides; it concentrates in a narrow channel. A mud wall forms, several tens of meters high, driving down at 100 km/h and simply sweeping everything away like a bulldozer.
Often there are subglacial lakes under glaciers. The glacier presses that water, and it bursts out. This could have been an additional factor.
Such phenomena are common in proglacial regions, for example, in Iceland. The glacier structure itself creates conditions for such extreme events.”
15min verdict: lacks context. Scientists have explanations for what could have caused the huge avalanche in the Himalayas, so internet users’ claims that this is the result of experiments are unfounded.
Publication prepared by 15min in cooperation with Meta, aiming to stop the spread of misleading news on social media. More about the program and its rules – here.
