Scientists are rushing to understand the exact causes of the deadly flash flood that has sent a wall of mud and water tearing through Himalayan river valleys on the China-Nepal border.
What’s clear so far is that a huge chunk of a glacier collapsed and that a 5.2 magnitude seismic event occurred at around 8:37 a.m. local time Wednesday, which in turn led to a catastrophic flow of debris downstream, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
“What we’ve certainly confirmed — there was a large ice avalanche, probably a mixture of ice and rock, which detached and then became fluid and then transformed into this devastating flood,” said Simon Allen, a research associate at the University of Zurich who studies glacial hazards in the Himalayas.
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