A "natural dam" formed by flooding in Nepal collapsed again just two days after a glacial lake outburst triggered massive floods, Reuters reported on the 28th.
An official in the flood-hit Rasuwa district said the natural dam of soil and rocks that had been blocking the lake created by the glacial lake outburst had collapsed, according to Reuters. AFP reported the same day, citing Nepali police, that authorities had received information that a natural dam had collapsed again on the Tibet side in China. Rescue operations in the flood-hit area were suspended for about 90 minutes as a result, Reuters said. Baek Sun-mi, a South Korean resident in Nepal, told Seoul Economic Daily by phone that residents were living with a ticking time bomb because they did not know when the next flood might come.
Chinese authorities said about 2 million cubic meters of water had pooled in the lake as of that day and that search and rescue operations had been temporarily halted out of concern for rescuers' safety. They projected that about 3 million cubic meters of additional water would flow in over the next three days.
Nepali police said 469 people had died as of that day in the massive flooding that hit the northern province of Bagmati on the 26th. Including three people killed in landslides and other incidents linked to the flooding in China's Tibet Autonomous Region, the combined death toll in the two countries stands at 472. The total number of missing was put at 1,535. Samuel Dhakal, a Nepali national staying in South Korea, said the floodwaters swept gravel, sand and even trees into a narrow valley all at once, leaving people without even time to escape. The Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment in Chengdu, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Water Resources, said the soil and rocks unleashed by the glacial lake outburst took just seven minutes to cascade from an altitude of about 5,000 meters to the southern border gate of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
