Himalayan disaster planning must move beyond sirens, forecasts: Experts

Dehradun: The ice-rock avalanche that triggered a flash flood in Nepal gave virtually no time for detection or warning, experts said, underscoring the need to rethink Himalayan disaster planning. They said planning must move beyond sirens and forecasts to consider where communities and critical infrastructure are built, as mountain hazards become increasingly complex and capable of triggering cascading disasters.

Based on preliminary analysis, scientists said the disaster unfolded too rapidly for conventional early-warning systems to offer meaningful protection. “This was an unprecedented and unexpected disaster. There was simply no detection and no time to issue a warning,” said Dr Farooq Azam, senior cryosphere specialist and intervention manager at ICIMOD.

“The event was a sudden-onset hazard that conventional warning systems were not designed to capture,” Azam said. Detecting where rock-ice failures could occur is particularly challenging, he added, as potential failure points may lie beneath glaciers or bedrock, beyond the reach of satellites or direct observation.

The lesson from Rasuwa, experts said, is that Himalayan disaster preparedness cannot rely on early warnings alone. “Early warning systems can save lives where sufficient lead time exists, but they cannot prevent infrastructure from being damaged by a sudden avalanche or debris flow,” Azam said.

“The immediate focus should be on stronger land-use planning, resilient infrastructure and greater community awareness of high-altitude hazards. This could require a fundamental rethink of how development is planned in the world’s youngest and geologically fragile mountain range,” he added.

Environmental impact assessments are routinely carried out before infrastructure projects are built. But Azam said there is an increasing need to assess how changing environmental and mountain conditions could affect such infrastructure over its lifetime.

The Rasuwa disaster has also renewed questions about where Himalayan communities are building. Scientists said traditional settlements were often located on higher ground and away from river channels, while newer development has increasingly expanded towards riverbanks and, in some cases, riverbeds.

Anjal Prakash, professor of public policy at FLAME University and an IPCC author, similarly said the Himalayan region had not lacked scientific warnings about rapidly changing mountain conditions. “Early warning systems are being sold as the fix, but no siren can outrun a mountainside collapsing in seconds,” he said.

“This wasn’t a distant disaster - the Hindu Kush Himalayan range stretches across India and neighbouring countries. It was also a disaster that climate models had predicted many years ago. Nepal is paying the price for a crisis it did not create. If this heartbreaking tragedy can help countries recognise the need for a shared approach to building adaptation and resilience, strengthening early-warning systems and enabling transboundary monitoring that would be a step forward for humanity in the fractured world order we are living in today,” said Aarti Khosla, director, Climate Trends.

Author: Insights by Prof. Anjal Prakash, Faculty of Public Policy