In the wake of the flood, could Nepal avert the next disaster?

Wednesday, August 26 began as a regular day for Prakash Pyakurel, a 43-year-old shopkeeper in the bustling town of Dhunge Bazaar in the northern belt of Central Nepal. Then sometime around 9:10 a.m. came the muffled crackle of a police loudspeaker. The words were “impossible to hear” over the noise of the town, he says.

Pyakurel took a couple of minutes to piece together that the announcement was calling for evacuation. He lost time closing the shop before sprinting home to alert his parents and daughter. In their living room, just a few hundred meters from the Trishuli River, they spent more vital minutes arguing over whether to head for higher ground.

At 9:15 a.m., a towering wall of water and debris surged in, forcing the family to the second floor. Then the third, and finally the fourth. Trapped at the top of their home, they could only pray as the flood obliterated the town around them.

After more than an hour of terror, the Pyakurels narrowly survived. Their “miracle green house,” as it came to be called in videos that went viral on social media, somehow remained standing. Thousands of others in towns along an almost 100-kilometer-stretch of the river weren’t as lucky.

Though the rock-ice avalanche that caused the Himalaya flash flood in late August occurred at 8:37 a.m. local time, many people downriver had only a few minutes of warning or less before the debris flow arrived. The flow destroyed four river gauge sensors before they could signal an alarm. Local authorities who learned of the flow by word of mouth scrambled to send SMS alerts and to reach riverbank towns with handheld megaphones.

The initial avalanche released an energy that equaled an atomic blast, and the resulting debris flow killed at least 1,400 people with more than 5,000 still missing as of September 24. Scientists are calling it one of the most catastrophic geohazards in recorded history. But despite the magnitude of the event, it didn’t have to be so deadly.