Himalaya Flood Kills 600; Building Boom Questioned

A glacier collapse on the China-Nepal border has killed more than 600 people and left around 2,500 missing on both sides, and Chinese authorities said Saturday that the debris lake threatening rescue crews downstream is shrinking rather than bursting.

The wall of rock, ice, mud and water that came down Wednesday wiped out villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, and swept away the border port complex linking China's Tibet to Nepal.

The devastation has landed on a region in the middle of a historic construction push, CNN reported — dams, tunnels, highways, railways and bridges going up across some of the most seismically and ecologically fragile terrain on earth.

The Second Lake

Authorities have flagged a larger body of water at the bottom of the glacier collapse. "We estimate its area to be over 120,000 square meters, but its depth is currently unknown," said Chen Hongqi, a senior engineer at the Ministry of Natural Resources' Geological Disaster Technical Guidance Center, according to Reuters.

An official with Nepal's Disaster Management Authority said flood risks remain until both lakes have fully drained. In rain on Saturday morning, more than 50 rescue workers were combing rubble and calling out for survivors, CCTV reported. Xinhua said cut roads and communications continue to hamper relief.

The Building Boom

There is no indication the disaster was linked to manmade development, CNN reported. But it hit a region where governments are racing to harness hydropower, minerals and tourism — and to fortify contested borders.

China is building a $168 billion megadam on Tibet's Yarlung Tsangpo river, which broke ground last July and is expected to generate more electricity than any project in the world. India's largest state-backed hydropower firm is pushing an 11,200-megawatt dam downstream. Nepal has been expanding hydropower along Himalayan rivers, at times financed by its two larger neighbors as they compete for influence.

The cost this week was immediate: more than 430 megawatts of Nepali power went offline after 12 dams were hit by floodwaters, with damage to under-construction projects accounting for another 470 megawatts, according to Nepal's Ministry for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation.