Flash floods grow more frequent as Himalayan glaciers melt
When a wall of water, rocks and mud tore through her remote village in Nepal last week, Pema Tamang and her neighbors fled uphill to a Buddhist stupa that had been rebuilt the previous year after a 2015 earthquake.
Tamang told The Associated Press that the stupa itself had only been restored in the past year after the earthquake destroyed it. “We were able to rebuild the stupa only last year after it was destroyed during the earthquake,” she said, referring to the shrine. “Sheltering in it was how we saved our lives from the floods.”
The flash floods that struck Tamang’s village are part of a wider pattern across the Himalayas, where high-mountain glaciers are melting and altering river paths, according to the AP. The steep mountain folds of the region are already prone to earthquakes.
Residents have had little time to rebuild from one disaster to the next, the AP reported, raising concerns over whether their communities can endure as climate change accelerates. The stupa that sheltered Tamang and her neighbors last week had itself been destroyed in the 2015 earthquake.