Catastrophic Flood Hits Nepal, Engulfing Crowds and Causing Quake
The authorities reported hundreds of people missing and at least 160 people killed in the border region of Nepal and Tibet, where an avalanche of mud, water, ice and rocks smashed down. By Binod Ghimire Leo Sands and Michael Levenson Binod Ghimire reported from Kathmandu, Nepal. The wave came without warning. A giant torrent of mud, water and ice, it smashed through buildings, swept away buses, snapped bridges into pieces and engulfed people who tried to run but were overtaken by its destructive force. When it was over on Wednesday, at least 160 people had been killed and hundreds more had been left missing on the border between Nepal and Tibet, a rugged region of lush, green river gorges surrounded by the highest peaks in the world, in the snowy Himalayas.
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Shaking in the area, at first recorded as a 4.4-magnitude earthquake, was actually caused by the landslide itself, according to the United States Geological Survey. Along the way, the avalanche pulverized itself into a fast-moving barrage of ice and rock that crushed everything in its path. βThe bottom looks like a bomb exploded β itβs just deposits from the broken-up glacier,β said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who studied satellite imagery of the disaster zone.
