So… Hundreds of people died because Chinese officials “didn’t have a mandate” to provide early warning (their words). Sounds about right.
I couldn’t live with something like that on my conscience.
That’s just me though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wednesday’s catastrophe was sparked by the collapse of the glacier in a relatively unmonitored area, and a lack of bilateral cooperation was not a significant factor in Nepal’s response, according to environmental anthropologist Austin Lord, senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank.
Not that I trust the guy from the other side of the planet to know much about the region, but no, people died on both sides of the border because a 100 foot wall of water and mud appeared in seconds, the area was relatively unmonitored per the article.
I expect the Chinese will set up much more monitoring and communication to prevent future incidents.
paywall
In addition to the archive, here is the Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/before-flood-catastrophe-nepal-asked-china-early-warnings-risks-mounted-2026-08-30/
Edit:
“People even didn’t get five minutes of lead time,” Dharam Raj Uprety, chief executive of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, told Bloomberg News in an interview. “We don’t have weather stations in high mountain areas” because of the “lack of trans-boundary data seeding mechanisms,” or limited sharing of weather and climate data across national borders. - [Source]
This archive doesn’t:
Only because usaid had been doing it and doge cut them off without warning. I’m guessing there wasn’t enough time for that vacuum to be filled.
