Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / Massive flash flood hits Nepal-China border dozens dead, hundreds missing

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Massive flash flood hits Nepal-China border dozens dead, hundreds missing · THE DAILY BRIEF

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In the breaking news, these devastating flash floods in Nepal
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: near the Chinese border. As of now, we are told
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: at least 31 people are dead, but that number is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: certain to rise. Hundreds of people, we are told, are missing,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: many likely tourists. There is this horrifying new video which
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: illustrates why there is so much concern, why we can
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: say with near certainty this death toll will go up.
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  Speaker 1: You just see this wall of water engulfing a town.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: There.
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  Speaker 1: The power, the force of that water just carrying so
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  Speaker 1: many of the buildings away, sweeping them off their foundations.
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  Speaker 1: We saw other images of buses just being tossed around
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  Speaker 1: like toy cars. Truly, truly devastating. We've been working to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: get new information. There are other images coming in as well.
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  Speaker 1: Let's get right to CNN's Gage Golding for the latest
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: on what you are seeing and learning about this.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I think you kind of hit the nail
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  Speaker 2: right on the head there. That video just kind of
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: grossly underestimates the number of fatalities that we're seeing right now.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: About 31 is the official count. And you look at this,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, just let's walk through this video. You see
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  Speaker 2: how tall that building is and you see how small
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  Speaker 2: those people are. I mean, that building has to be,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: you know, what, five, six stories tall and the water
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  Speaker 2: flows over it like it's a small rock dam in
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  Speaker 2: a creek, if you will. I mean, it just, It's
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  Speaker 2: hard to imagine. You know, I was in the Texas
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  Speaker 2: Hill Country for the floods there last year, and I
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  Speaker 2: remember looking up into these trees and seeing just, wow,
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  Speaker 2: the amount of water. This dwarfs that. And not to
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: compare flood to flood, but it just, the amount of
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  Speaker 2: water is hard to truly understand. And the numbers, again,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: they are going to change and unfortunately dramatically increase. But
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: the number of people killed here, 31. There are hundreds missing,
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: including Around 400 people, that's according to the Nepal Tourism Board,
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  Speaker 2: from seven different nations, including the United States, the UK,
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  Speaker 2: South Africa, India, Australia, Netherlands. This is a very touristy town.
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  Speaker 2: As you can see, those tour buses there are being
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  Speaker 2: pushed away like toy cars. But there's one video I
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: really want to show, and I want you to listen
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  Speaker 2: to it because it truly encapsulates tourism. what happened in
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  Speaker 2: those moments. And I want you to notice that it's,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: in this video, it's nice out. You can see it's sunny.
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  Speaker 2: It seems like a beautiful day. And then all of
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  Speaker 2: a sudden, this wall of water comes out of nowhere.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Please watch this.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, my God!
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  Speaker 2: I mean, the shrieks in their voice, you can only
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  Speaker 2: imagine what was going through their mind there. What you
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  Speaker 2: see in the beginning of the video is people just
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  Speaker 2: standing around, maybe hearing the water rushing down, but they
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  Speaker 2: weren't panicking in that moment yet. And then you saw
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  Speaker 2: the panic set in. You saw people running. You saw
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  Speaker 2: what I could only imagine in the front of that
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  Speaker 2: bus was somebody driving as fast as they could to
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  Speaker 2: get to higher ground. We don't know the outcome of
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  Speaker 2: that video, but we do know some details like this,
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  Speaker 2: including around 60 workers, including almost a dozen from South
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  Speaker 2: Korea working on a hydro power plant there, a 20
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  Speaker 2: megawatt plant that they were working on. They are still
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: unaccounted for at this point. So this is all up
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  Speaker 2: and down this river gorge here and you might be
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  Speaker 2: wondering how does something like this happen? I mentioned that
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  Speaker 2: it seemed like a beautiful sun shining day and from
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  Speaker 2: that video it truly does. It doesn't look like it
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  Speaker 2: was storming or anything like that. From what we have
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  Speaker 2: right now is it sounds like there was an earthquake
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  Speaker 2: registering about a 4.4 magnitude according to the USGS that
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  Speaker 2: triggered a landslide that lodged into a river, partially blocked
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  Speaker 2: it and shoved what can only be described as a
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  Speaker 2: wall of water down the river into these villages. And
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  Speaker 2: as you can see there, it's pretty much a gorge.
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  Speaker 2: There's nowhere for this water to go except taking everything
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  Speaker 2: with it. This is a situation that we're going to
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  Speaker 2: continue to follow as these numbers continue to come in.
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  Speaker 2: Current death toll 31 with hundreds missing. But I imagine
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  Speaker 2: the next time we talk, we'll have some updated information. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 2: probably not some great information there.
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  Speaker 1: Now, Gage, you showed while you were talking, we saw
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  Speaker 1: those buses being swept away. They're their parking garage. This
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  Speaker 1: is an aerial shot right here. Just pointing out, you
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  Speaker 1: can see where the floods came in, way overflowing the
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  Speaker 1: banks there. I don't know if there were other buildings
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  Speaker 1: there that simply got swept away, but you can see
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  Speaker 1: how many buildings the water just simply completely passed through
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  Speaker 1: as it swamped that village. Obviously, the video of that
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  Speaker 1: school bus, those kids shrieking is terrifying. The one hopeful
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  Speaker 1: thing there is that they seem to have made it through, right?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the video made it through. And the water
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  Speaker 1: did not reach those kids. But it is horrifying to
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  Speaker 1: hear their shrieks there. Gage, we're going to let you
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  Speaker 1: dig for more video and see if you can reach
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  Speaker 1: people on the ground there. Thank you so much for
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: sharing your reporting on this.
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  Speaker 3: I want to bring in our meteorologist now, Derek Van Dam.
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  Speaker 3: And you'll have been listening to our guest there explaining
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  Speaker 3: what he believes happened. may have happened, and it's pretty
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: frightening stuff when you consider what we have just seen.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, these images are absolutely devastating.
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  Speaker 4: Becky, we're trying to understand it in real time, just
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  Speaker 4: like you, just like the individual, the authoritative individual you
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  Speaker 4: talked to from the Nepalese government a moment ago. But
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  Speaker 4: let's talk about what we know, and let's talk about
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  Speaker 4: the cascading hazards that this area is so prone to.
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  Speaker 4: We know that this is the monsoon season across Nepal.
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  Speaker 4: We know that August is in the height of summer.
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  Speaker 4: We've got thousands of glaciers that line the Himalayans across
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  Speaker 4: this area and this part of the world because of
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  Speaker 4: climate change is warming two times faster than the global average.
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  Speaker 4: So what that's doing is accelerating the loss of ice
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  Speaker 4: from these glaciers. And what that's doing is causing, or
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  Speaker 4: at least creating, these glacial lakes in some very precarious
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  Speaker 4: positions high into the mountains of the Himalayas. Now this
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  Speaker 4: is kind of a pool of water, right, that is
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  Speaker 4: often formed by these melting glaciers. But it can also
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  Speaker 4: be filled by the excessive rain from the monsoon season.
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  Speaker 4: So these cascading effects, not to mention an earthquake that
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  Speaker 4: was registered in and around the location of this disaster,
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  Speaker 4: could have added to this river being dammed up. These
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  Speaker 4: glacial lake outbursts, this potential of a glacial lake outbursts,
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  Speaker 4: just being exacerbated because of these culminating problems that puts
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  Speaker 4: over 2 million people at risk that live in the
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  Speaker 4: valleys below across this part of the Nepal and China border. Now,
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  Speaker 4: ice loss here since the year 2000 has doubled. So
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  Speaker 4: that is one of the concerns here. So when we
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  Speaker 4: think about the earthquake that was located right about there,
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  Speaker 4: if there was any kind of debris, we're talking ice,
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  Speaker 4: We're talking about rock that's been destabilized from the increase
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  Speaker 4: in temperatures. The fact that it's still monsoon season and
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  Speaker 4: it's likely rained across this area, that obviously destabilizes the ground.
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  Speaker 4: And any of that rock and debris falling into the
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  Speaker 4: rivers and the gorges below can easily dam up that water.
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  Speaker 4: So if we have a glacial lake outburst, if this
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  Speaker 4: is indeed the problem, indeed the cause of this deadly flooding,
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  Speaker 4: it was made worse by this melt off from glaciers
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  Speaker 4: thanks to monsoon rains. the increased temperatures across the planet,
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  Speaker 4: this area warming twice as fast. These are the culminating
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  Speaker 4: factors that can lead to these disasters. We've seen it
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  Speaker 4: time and time again, a glacial lake outburst that happened
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  Speaker 4: last year, similar effects, devastating impacts. And it is very,
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  Speaker 4: very scary to not only see these videos, but to
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  Speaker 4: live at the base of these towering behemoth mountains.