For days I have been thinking about whether we can say anything about the disaster in Nepal, and whether there is anything we can do from here at all. It took me a few days to sort it out for myself. Here is what I have understood so far.
What happened in the Himalayas?
On Wednesday, 26 August, at around 8:37 in the morning local time, part of the mountainside broke away from the north face of Langtang Lirung, together with a glacier. At 7,234 metres, the mountain is the highest in Nepal's Langtang region and sits right on the border with Tibet. The glacier lay at around 5,200 metres. Millions of tonnes of rock and ice crashed down into the valley, breaking apart into a mixture of mud, water, ice and debris. Seismometers in the United States and Germany first registered the collapse as an earthquake.
Where the enormous masses of water came from is still unclear. It is considered possible that glacial lakes emptied. The way I picture it: an invisible lake, grown over decades through the melt, with the glacier in front of it like a dam wall — until the pressure became too great. That image only helps me grasp how a rockfall turns into a flood.
The flood ran down some 4,500 metres of altitude over roughly 80 kilometres, through narrow valleys as far as the town of Trishuli Bazar. There was no warning. Almost no one had a chance to run. That is exactly why the images leave us with shock and helplessness above all, and exactly why the scale of it is so hard to take in.
What this leaves me with
Knowing how it unfolded has both shaken me and, in one respect, brought me some relief.
Relief, because this is a disaster confined to a narrow space. Everything on the valley floor was swept away — but the settlements and pastures higher up were spared.
Shaken, because where the flood passed through there is, unlike after an earthquake, almost no hope of survivors. There are no cavities in the rubble where someone might be waiting. More than 2,400 people are listed as missing, with a further 550 or so on the Chinese side, and the casualty figures already run into the thousands. Many families will never get certainty.
And then there is the infrastructure. Everything people depend on stood right by the river: hydropower plants, fresh water lines, bridges, markets, schools, community buildings and road connections. In some valleys, communal life takes place down by the water.
According to first estimates by the United Nations, around 10,000 households need humanitarian assistance. UNICEF speaks of more than 17,000 affected children.
How severe the damage is on the Tibetan side is unclear. There are fewer villages there, so the number of victims is likely to be lower.
Coordination this time is running far more through the Nepali government and the authorities than it did after the 2015 earthquake. Back then, many offers of help came to nothing because there was no central body to bring them together. With a disaster this focused, I think that is the right way — even if it means we can intervene less directly from outside.
And what about Changthang?
This question came up several times, so briefly: our Tibetan nomad friends are well. The Langtang region lies around 900 kilometres as the crow flies from the part of Changthang where they live — roughly the distance from Hamburg to Munich. We are in touch.
Where help arrives now
The large search and recovery operations are something small donations cannot really influence. Thousands of emergency personnel are in the field there, and the government is organising it itself.
What weighs on me are the children. Schools have been washed away, families torn apart, and there will be children who have lost their parents. For them, the hard part only begins once the cameras have gone. That is why I believe support designed for the long term is the most sensible thing we can do right now.
SOS Children's Villages have been active in Nepal since the late 1960s and have been working for Tibetan families in the Pokhara valley since the 1970s. In Changthang too, many nomad children owe their schooling to SOS — I have seen this myself, and it is the reason I trust this organisation. An SOS team is currently assessing the situation in the affected districts and preparing to help.
Plan International is currently assessing the impact together with local partners. The focus is on clean drinking water, hygiene and rebuilding schools.
Finally
I have attached two graphics: one shows the distance between Langtang Lirung and Tso Moriri in Changthang, the other how steeply the flood ran down through the narrow valleys.
What I hope for most now is that the lakes which have newly formed do not cause any further damage. And that this region recovers faster than seems imaginable at the moment.
Warm regards,
Anton
Anton Förster, CEO of Local Brands worldwide GmbH