Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
China has, for the first time, opened Gyirong County in Tibet to PTI and a select group of foreign journalists after the August 26 flash floods that devastated the Tibet-Nepal border, destroyed a border immigration post and caused heavy casualties on both sides. The scale of the disaster had until now largely been seen from the Nepal side, where the death toll has crossed 1,300 and around 5,000 people remain missing.
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One of the starkest images of the disaster has been a widely shared video showing a huge wall of mud, rocks and debris swallowing the immigration building within seconds. On the Chinese side, officials said 31 people were killed and 531 remain missing in Tibet, including 261 foreigners. Of those, 49 are from India and 22 are from other countries.
The disaster was triggered by an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26, sending a huge volume of water and debris downstream through the Bhotekoshi River and hitting settlements in northern and central Nepal. Most of the dead and missing foreigners were at or around the immigration building when floodwaters and debris swept through the area.
Chinese authorities said they have been rebuilding roads to restore access to the cut-off border post and have also sent relief materials to Nepal. The visit to Gyirong County was aimed at showing both the destruction caused by the floods and the relief and reconstruction work now under way.
China said that, together with Nepal, it had officially determined that the disaster was caused by the collapse of a high-altitude glacier in Nepal. “We noted that experts and official institutions of China and Nepal have made a preliminary assessment of the cause of the disaster,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a media briefing in Beijing on August 28.
“According to their analysis, the disaster has been triggered by a collapse of a high-altitude glacier in Nepal,” he said.
Officials and researchers said the glacier collapse came without warning, raising concern about similar events in the future. Gao Rong, deputy director of China’s National Climate Centre, said glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau are becoming less stable.
“Over the past 60 years, the glacier area on the Tibetan Plateau has shrunk by around 24 per cent, with around 7,000 small glaciers disappearing completely,” Gao said.
“Looking ahead, the structural stability of glaciers across the Tibetan Plateau will decline further. Glacial disasters are likely to become more frequent and could amplify in destruction and reach through cascading effects,” Gao said.
The Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a report on the August 26 disaster that the mudslide created by the glacier collapse travelled 22 km along the valley and reached Gyirong Port at the Tibet border crossing in just seven minutes. After studying satellite and field data from Gyirong County, researchers said collapsing ice and rock rushed down the valley, scoured the riverbed, pulled debris from the banks and mixed with water, turning a high-altitude collapse into a destructive mudslide.
The researchers said disaster-risk assessments should take into account cascading hazards linked to the high-mountain cryosphere, and that hazard evaluations can no longer depend only on measuring the initial collapse. The disaster has also sharpened focus on broader risks from Tibet-origin events in a region where Beijing is building major hydropower projects.
The floods of August 26 left severe damage at the Tibet-Nepal border, with the destroyed immigration post becoming one of the clearest symbols of the tragedy. As China continues road restoration and relief work, officials and scientists are also pointing to the growing risk of similar glacier-linked disasters across the Tibetan Plateau.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
