A massive landslide has destroyed a remote Himalayan village. Fifty or more people may have died.
Astonishing and terrifying footage has appeared today of a dreadful debris flow that struck the village of Tharali (also called Dharali in some places) in Uttarakhand today. The video has been widely shared on social media. This is a version on Youtube (the footage starts at about 6 seconds):-
There is confusion about the location of this event, but i believe it is at: [31.0406, 78.7811]. This is a Google Earth view of the village in question:-
News reports indicate that four people are known to have died and that about 50 people are missing, although there will be huge uncertainty in those numbers.
Whilst this event has been variously described as a flood or a flash flood, it is without doubt a debris flow (i.e. a landslide). The trigger appears to have been a cloudburst event. The exact mechanism to generate the debris flow is unclear at present, but the valley above Tharali is steep and rugged:-
Note the marker that delineates Tharali – it is the valley above the village that has generated the flow. Possible causes could be multiple landslides that have combined to create a channelised debris flow, a single large landslide that transitioned into the flow, or a valley blocking landslide that collapsed. We won’t know until satellite or aerial imagery is available.
Rescue operations are going to be hampered by the blockage of other roads by the same rainfall event, the remote location and the low survivability of such debris flows.
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