Not sure how it's an unmitigated disaster;

Ok...not a disaster. (Actually, I'm sure by someone's irrational estimation that it is a disaster -- or at least evidence of one.)

But it is unmitigated.

How would one mitigate an iceberg of that size flipping over?

 

You don't, you stay away from it.

 

 

 

WARNING: This video shows footage from a deadly industrial accident. Viewer discretion is advised. Surveillance video from the Nippon Dynawave paper mill in Longview, Washington, shows the immediate aftermath of the deadly May 26, 2026 rupture of a white liquor tank that killed 11 people. The video, released by the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office and obtained through a records request, was recorded by a surveillance camera in the facility's Station 6 Central Maintenance parking lot. The tank is barely visible near the top of the frame. Seconds into the recording, one side of the tank can be seen collapsing, followed by a large gaseous cloud. Over the following minutes, the cloud and a flow of white liquor gradually spread across the parking lot.

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2zyerv2lmo
Hundreds missing and 31 dead as flash flood hits Nepal-Tibet border

Seems an earthquake caused a landslide into a lake causing a inland tsunami down the river.



Almost no hope of escaping the main flow of that.

https://english.onlinekhabar.com/rasuwa-flood-in-pictures.html

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6y8mjmnpxv0t

Summary

• At least 95 people have been killed, and hundreds of tourists are missing, after a massive flash flood and mudslide on the Nepal-Tibet border
• The missing tourists include more than 100 from India, 47 from the US, and 33 from the UK, according to Nepal's tourist board. The area is popular with pilgrims and trekkers
• CCTV from Tibet shows a wall of water and mud hitting buildings at a border crossing - other images from Nepal show people trying to flee as the flood surges
• In Tibet, Chinese President Xi Jinping is offering personal directives - that usually means an incident is very serious, writes our correspondent in Beijing, Laura Bicker
• Nepal's foreign minister says the flood may have been caused by an earthquake triggering an avalanche
• This is the most devastating disaster in Nepal since the 2015 earthquake which killed 9,000 people, reports the BBC's Phanindra Dahal in Kathmandu

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202608/1369172.shtml

China's Ministry of Water Resources said that a significant barrier lake has formed near the confluence of the Chhochen Khola and Purepu Tsangpo rivers in Nepal, with its water volume estimated at 2 million cubic meters as of Thursday morning and the lake already overflowing. Another 3 million cubic meters of water is expected to flow into the lake over the next three days, posing a high risk of a breach, China Central Television reported Thursday.


https://www.bastillepost.com/global...-gyirong-mudslide-site-poses-high-breach-risk

 

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202608/1369172.shtml

China's Ministry of Water Resources said that a significant barrier lake has formed near the confluence of the Chhochen Khola and Purepu Tsangpo rivers in Nepal, with its water volume estimated at 2 million cubic meters as of Thursday morning and the lake already overflowing. Another 3 million cubic meters of water is expected to flow into the lake over the next three days, posing a high risk of a breach, China Central Television reported Thursday.

View attachment 370824
https://www.bastillepost.com/global...-gyirong-mudslide-site-poses-high-breach-risk

It's very difficult to put those numbers into any meaningful perspective, especially since what matters more than total volume is how concentrated that volume is when it hits downstream and how fast it is moving.

To try to get some feel of it, I looked up the flow rate of the Mississippi River as it flows into the Gulf of Mexico and it averages about 600,000 ft^3/s. A cubic meter is about 35 cubic feet, so 5 million cubic meters would constitute about five minutes of the flow of the Mississippi. But it's also a couple thousand feet wide and a few dozen feet deep at that point, so the velocities are about normal walking speed in the navigation channel.

If the barrier lake breaches, it will all depend on how quickly it breaches. If the main breach occurs over days or even hours, then the situation may not end up being too dire. But since it is already overtopping and more water is coming in, a highly likely scenario is that the outflow will cut a channel through the saturated, heterogeneous material that makes up the dam and, as it does, the outflow will increase resulting in faster erosion. If this happens without resulting an a catastrophic failure, then it might still not result in severe additional damage. But if it does cause a catastrophic failure that occurs in a span of seconds to minutes, that's a very different situation.

I haven't seen much in the way of estimates on the volume released in the initial flash flood (not surprising, it's going to take time to make decent estimates), but the ones I did find seem to be settling on something in the 10 to 50 million cubic meters of water, rock, ice, and sediment. Plus, that was released over a very small window of time.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LGOTNGHTEtY

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/28/is-nepal-facing-another-devastating-flood-from-a-new-lake

On Friday, officials in Nepal’s Rasuwa district said they had been notified that the barrier lake had begun to overflow.

“We can see that the level of water in the river is rising,” Narendra Pariyar, Rasuwa’s most senior official, said.

He added that it is currently unclear how high the water level is. “We do not know how big it is and how high is its water level. We can see that the level of water in the river is rising.”

Scientists say this disaster has created not one but two new lakes. One has formed high up near the glacier, where meltwater is now trapped.

The other, much larger and more dangerous lake sits on a river in Nepal, where a huge landslide blocked the valley and dammed the river.

“The danger is not just the lake itself, but the possibility of sudden dam failure. In a steep valley like this, even a short-lived breach can generate a fast-moving debris-laden flood with very little warning for downstream communities,” Bhattarai said.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources estimated on Thursday that the lake is holding about 1.5 to 2 million cubic metres of water and warned that about 3 million cubic metres more could flow in over three days.

This is the equivalent of about 1,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

“It is a threat, because if a formed lake suddenly breaches it may cause another flood; it may mobilise the sediments that will hamper search and rescue operation and will also put dangers to those surviving in the hydro tunnels,” Khadka said.

This means that if the lake causes a flood, the flood will pick up mud and rocks, making the water even more destructive and making it harder for teams to search for the missing.

 

New footage exclusively obtained by The New York Times showed the aftermath of the moment a giant glacier broke away from the top of a ridge in the Himalayas, setting off a torrent of mud, snow, floodwaters and debris to the valley communities below.


https://www.facebook.com/reel/3494093960757115

 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/world/asia/china-tibet-floods-nepal-censorship.html

Punishment and Silence: China Pulls Out the Disaster Playbook in Tibet
While journalists can report freely on grief and anger in Nepal, China’s official media have presented a sanitized disaster aftermath in Tibet.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/world/asia/china-tibet-floods-nepal-censorship.html

Punishment and Silence: China Pulls Out the Disaster Playbook in Tibet
While journalists can report freely on grief and anger in Nepal, China’s official media have presented a sanitized disaster aftermath in Tibet.

I wonder if the general population are aware of the constant smokescreen that they're being subjected to ...