By Three months before last week’s devastating floods, experts from China and Nepal met in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, on 27 May to discuss the risk of disasters in the border area and to coordinate on how best to monitor and respond to hazards such as floods, according to the Reuters news agency.
The participants called for joint risk-reduction measures, including inventories of glacial lakes and hazard mapping, but two Nepali officials told Reuters they did not receive as much information as they wanted from China on glacier risks and water levels after the meeting.
Now, a rapid hazard assessment of the Nepal-Tibet disaster prepared by HiRISK, comprised of a group of scientists that produce risk data in the High Mountain Asia region and create guidelines for policymakers, said there were “pre-event indications” of the avalanche, raising more questions about the effectiveness of disaster preparedness.
The assessment was prepared by HiRISK on 28 August, according to ABC News (Australia), which first reported the findings. Jakob Steiner, a co-author of the report and a geoscientist with the University of Graz who has researched lake bursts in Nepal, told the outlet that early warning systems for construction workers were “very weak”.
The HiRISK report noted that no early warning system for glacier-related hazards had been established in the affected area.
“Given the rapid speed of the initial avalanche, warning time from conventional … systems would have been minimal and likely insufficient for successful evacuation at the Nepal-China border check point at Rasuwagadhi (Gyirong Port),” it said.
“Further downstream, with warning times of 10 minutes or more, comprehensive and well-capacitated systems could have saved a significant number of lives.”
It is unclear what data – if any – China had before the disaster of the conditions of the glaciers in the area, especially those lying outside its borders.
Originally published on www.theguardian.com — View original