It was 2018. Our second trip to Chautara, a small village perched at 1,600 m in the Sindhupalchok district of Nepal. For our Nepalese friends, that altitude barely qualified as “hills.”. We had to drive off-road for hours to reach the village late in the evening. The rain was relentless, and with the admittedly soft European eye, everything looked quite concerning. We had all seen footage on television in the past, entire villages wiped out by landslides. Our Nepalese partners took it easy. “We can’t fight nature, but we are strong”.

And they are.

Sindhupalchok was the hardest-hit district during the devastating Mw 7.8 Gorkha earthquake of April 2015. Almost 3,570 lives were lost in that district alone, out of nearly 9,000 across the country, with over 600,000 homes destroyed nationwide. When we arrived three years later, reconstruction was still far from complete, yet the sense of community, purpose and quiet determination was evident. People were rebuilding everything from the ground up.

Yesterday, Nepal was struck again. A glacier fragment approximately 600 m wide broke off at high altitude, triggering an ice avalanche that descended nearly 1,200 m before channelling catastrophic floodwaters down the Bhotekoshi River valley. At least 160 people have been killed, hundreds remain missing.

This is not an isolated event. Himalayan glaciers are retreating at an accelerating pace. Nepal, sitting on one of the most seismically active zones on the planet, directly below some of the world’s most unstable glacial masses, faces a multi-hazard reality that engineering codes and risk frameworks are simply not designed to address.

But Nepalese people are strong and resilient. And as ever, the sun will come out again.

Our thoughts are with all of them.

#Nepal #Resilience #NaturalHazards #EarthquakeEngineering #ClimateChange #GlacialFloods #MultiHazard #Himalayas

Narayan Prasad Marasini Ramesh Guragain Vibek Manandhar Prachand Man Pradhan Prem Maskey Hima Shrestha Yadav Mainali Amod Mani Dixit