Everest’s Sherpas fear their homes could wash away

BBC:

Sitting at an altitude of around 3,800m (12,467ft) is Thame, a small Sherpa village in Nepal’s Everest region.

It is home to many record-holding Sherpa mountaineers, including Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the first person to climb Mount Everest along with explorer Edmund Hillary.

But on 16 August, the village was engulfed by icy flood waters after a glacial lake burst its banks, displacing some 60 people and destroying more than a dozen houses and hotels along with a school and health clinic.

The incident has left many of the village’s residents – around 300 people – wondering whether it is even safe to live there any longer.

‘We are still in shock’

No deaths or injuries were reported, but members of the Sherpa community said they were lucky that the flood hit during daytime, when everyone was awake and the alerts arrived quickly.

“If this had happened at night time, between 200 to 300 people would have lost their lives,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association said.

“We are still in shock, and we are still crying when we (villagers) talk to each other,” said Yangji Doma Sherpa, a native of Thame who was born in the village.

“The bigger question is if this place is safe enough to live in now. This flood has shown that we face an even more dangerous situation now, and therefore people don’t feel safe.”

Some of Thame’s residents live nomadic lifestyles and live in different villages depending on the season.

But in this case, even villagers downhill from Thame have been affected.

“Because of the flood some parts of our village was swept away… luckily we managed to run up the hill,” said Pasang Sherpa at Tok Tok village which is almost two days’ trek downhill from Thame.

“The otherwise milky and frothy river turned so dark brown, with boulders and debris being swept down.

The sound and the sight was so scary that I am still shaken. I have taken refuge in a nearby village and am thinking if I should ever go back to Tok Tok.”

Locals say much of the risk could be reduced if there were proper monitoring mechanisms for glacial lakes located upstream from human settlements.

While a few lakes have drawn the attention of scientists and authorities, they added, the rest are simply ignored.

Meanwhile, disaster preparedness is non-existent in many villages.

“A few villages downstream of the Imja glacial lake have been trained on how to run in case of a flood,” Ms Doma Sherpa said.

“But there has been no training in our village whatsoever.”

Of the more than one dozen glacial lake outburst incidents recorded in Nepal in the past 50 years, four have been in the Everest’s Dudhkosi river basin.

One occurred upstream of Thame in 1985, when a large avalanche cascaded into the Dig Tsho glacial lake and created a wave that overtopped the dam. The ensuing flood destroyed a hydroelectricity plant downstream and caused more than three million dollars worth of damage.