Banks (Page 25)

Sitting at an altitude of around 3, 800m ( 12, 467ft ) is Thame, a small Sherpa village in Nepal’s Everest region.

It is home to some record-holding Sherpa climbers, including Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the first man to climb Mount Everest along with adventurer Edmund Hillary.

However, after a glacial lakes burst its banks on August 16, the town was engulfed by snowy flood waters, displacing around 60 people and destroying more than a few residences and hotels, as well as a university and medical facility.

Around 300 of the village’s residents are now asking themselves whether it is also safe to live there any more as a result of the event.

No injuries or fatalities were reported, but Sherpa residents said they were fortunate that the flood occurred during the daytime, when everyone was alive and the alerts arrived immediately.

” If this had happened at night time, between 200 to 300 people would have lost their lives”, Ang Tshering Sherpa, past president of Nepal Mountaineering Association said.

” We are still in shock, and we are still crying when we (villagers ) talk to each other”, said Yangji Doma Sherpa, a native of Thame who was born in the village.

The bigger issue is whether this area is currently safe to live in. People do n’t feel safe because this flood has shown that we are currently in an even more dangerous situation.

Another rural residents have experienced similar hardship.

” Some components of our town were wiped away by the storm, but we managed to run up the hill,” said Pasang Sherpa at Tok Tok town, which is a walk downhill from Thame in about two days.

” Brochures and debris were swept down by the then watery and bubbly river, turning it into a dark brown.”

I am also shaken because the look and the tone were thus spooky. I’ve found refuge in a local village, and I’m considering whether or not I should always go back to Tok Tok.

Locals claim that a large portion of the risk may be reduced if proper monitoring were in place for glacial lake located inland of human settlements.

While a dozen rivers have drawn the attention of experts and authorities, they added, the rest are basically ignored.

Nevertheless, disaster planning is non-existent in many townships.

A few settlements downstream of the Imja glacial lakes have been taught how to operate in the event of a flood, according to Ms. Doma Sherpa.

” But there has been no instruction in our community anymore”.

Four incidents occurred in the Dudhkosi valley valley near Everest out of the more than a dozen glacial lake outbursts that have been documented in Nepal over the past 50 years.

One incident occurred upstream of Thame in 1985, when a big avalanche slammed into the Dig Tsho glacier river and created a storm that topped the bridge. A hydroelectricity plant downstream was destroyed by the flood, which also caused more than$ 3 million in damage.

Not a problem that only affects Thame, the lack of checking is not one-sided by it.

In the Himalayas, there are hundreds of ice and glacial lakes, but only a small percentage of those in the Mountain region are monitored and equipped with premature flood warning systems.

Global warming is also accelerating glacier dissolving, which could cause lake to overflow.

A study conducted by the University of Leeds in 2021 found that over the past few decades Himalayan ice have lost snow ten times more quickly than the regular price since their development, which dates back 400 to 700 years.

According to a study that was published in the Nature book in 2022, South Col Glacier on Mount Everest may have lost half of its size since the 1990s as a result of heat.

Imja Lake, which is located below Mount Everest, was drained in 2016 after authorities discovered it was in risk of overflowing and flooding nearby communities, trekking trails, and roads.

However, according to experts, several new rivers have formed in recent years, while others have expanded and joined forces to be larger people.

The destabilization of the native scenery, which is caused by fast-retreating ice, adds to the risk by creating more floods and avalanches that you put into the lakes and cause them to burst, further aggravating the situation.

Officials claim to have monitored around 20 glacial rivers in the Nepali Himalayas and have listed them as dangerous, but the two that burst on August 16 were none mentioned in that list nor closely monitored by authorities.

The damage is so great, according to Mr. Tshering Sherpa,” but they were the smallest people, and no one cared about them.”

” Think what might occur if the great ones suddenly burst out. In the Mountain area, there are many of them.

A helicopter inspection by Nepal’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority ( NDRRMA ) revealed there were a total of five small glacial lakes close to the source of the flooding. One of them had half burst, another had burst fully.

Which means that the three different lakes at the same place was burst out at the same time, according to Ms. Doma Sherpa.

” Now that people know that, they do n’t feel safe anymore. We are mainly concerned about older people because of their accessibility issues.

Visitors claim that some damages caused by floods are then irreparable, and the effects of global warming on Himalayan glaciers and lakes have only grown worse since then.

The Thame River’s course changed as a result of Friday’s storm, which changed while it used to pass through the Khumbu valley’s left bank. It now flows right through the town, claiming nearly half of the land.

” Much of the remaining property today is full of dust and rock”, Ms Doma Sherpa said.

” This is not the same as rebuilding the homes that the earthquake destroyed.” What can you create on when you have no property left?

The only electricity station in the area that provides energy to the area has also been damaged by the storm.

After the catastrophe, which caused the place to stop working, mud and debris accumulated in the reservoir.

” As a result, energy source has been cut off, and because of that telecom techniques were also not functioning”, Mingma Sherpa, head of a junior team at Namche, a big tourist spot near Thame, said.

Since the crisis struck, the region has been completely disconnected from the outside world. This is quite frightening”.

” This catastrophe has shown how uncomfortable and vulnerable we are,” said one of the people who had been worried about slow commencement effects of climate change, such as dwindling water resources.

State leaders are aware of the concerns of the area.

The power is then assembling a team of experts to” studie the risks posed by the three remaining lakes downstream of Thame town and determine whether the upstream settlement places are safe to live in or not,” according to Anil Pokhrel, mind of NDRRMA.

” We are even working on disaster risk reduction in the region”, she added.

Members of native Sherpa areas, but, say they’ve seen more talk and less motion over the years when it comes to dealing with challenges from glacial lakes outbursts.

” We hear all great ideas, especially during meetings, and soon the ideas are forgotten”, Ms Doma Sherpa said.

” But we ca n’t forget what this flood has done,” he says, adding that there are lakes nearby that can cause disasters for us at any time.

Warning: This article contains facts some readers may find disconcerting.

When the weapons started falling, Fayaz and his family believed they were moments away from health, saying,” We were getting on the boat one after another; that’s when they started bombing us.”

Howls and shouts filled the air around 17: 00 local period on 5 August, Fayaz* says, as hundreds of terrified Rohingyas made their way to the bankers of the Naf valley in the area of Maungdaw.

Attacks on settlements earlier in the area meant this was what hundreds of families, including Fayaz’s, saw as their only choice- that to get to health, they had to leave from northern Myanmar to Bangladesh’s safer shores.

Fayaz carried sacks full of whatever they had gathered. His family was carrying their six-year-old girl, their eldest was running alongside them. His sister’s girl was walking ahead, with the child’s eight-month-old child in her arms.

The primary weapon killed his sister-in-law quickly. The child was terribly injured- but dead.

” I ran and carried him… But he passed away while we waited for the bombing to end.

Nisar* had even made it to the river by about 17: 00, having decided to leave with his family, spouse, son, daughter and girl. ” We heard robots behind and then the loud noise of an explosion”, he recalls. ” We were all thrown to the ground. They dropped bombs on us using robots”.

Only one of his household members survived, Nisar.

Fayaz, his partner, and child escaped and had finally cross the river. Despite his demands, the boatman resisted allowing Fayaz to take the baby’s body with them. He claimed that there was no purpose in bringing the dying, so I dug a tunnel by the river bank and quickly buried him.

They are currently all in Bangladesh’s comparative safety, but they could be sent back if they are apprehended by the government there. In a single moment, Nisar clutches a Quran, unable to comprehend how his entire world was destroyed.

” If I’d known what would happen, I would never have tried to leave that day”, Nisar says.

It is extremely challenging to part along the civil war in Myanmar. However, the BBC has been able to capture the events of August 5 through a number of exclusive interviews with more than a hundred Rohingya escaped to Bangladesh and the video they shared.

All of the survivors, who are armed Rohingya civilians, report experiencing numerous bomb explosions over the course of two hours. Some people claimed they were hit by cement and gunfire, while the majority of people described the drones being dropped, a tool that is extremely being used in Myanmar. In the days that followed, the MSF office working in Bangladesh reported that it saw a significant increase in Rohingya wounded in the days that followed; half of the injured were women and children.

The river lender is covered in bruised bodies, many of whom are children and women, according to survivors ‘ videos that BBC Verify analyzed. Numerous witnesses have reported seeing numerous body to the BBC despite there being no official count of how many people have been killed.

Victims reported to us that the Arakan Army, one of the strongest rebel groups in Myanmar, attacked them, which had recently forced the defense out of nearly all of Rakhine State. They claimed that as they ran away from their villages, the creek bank attacked them once more before they were forced to flee.

The AA declined to be interviewed, but Khaing Tukha, its spokeswoman, denied the charge and responded to the BBC’s inquiries with a speech that stated” the affair did not occur in areas controlled by us.” He even falsely accused the AA and accused Rohingya protesters of carrying out the massacre.

Nisar stands by his consideration, yet.

” The Arakan Army are lying”, he says. ” They carried out the attacks. On that day, it was only them in our neighborhood. And they’ve been kicking us in the face for days. They do n’t want to leave any Muslim alive”.

Most of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims live as a majority in Myanmar – a Buddhist-majority position, where the two areas have long had a fraught relationship. Local Rohingya men also participated in the problems in 2017, when the Myanmar military killed thousands of Rohingyas in what the UN referred to as” a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Rohingyas once more find themselves trapped in a spiraling conflict between the coup and the AA, which enjoys solid support from the cultural Rohingya population.

Rohingya survivors told the BBC they wished to share details of the violence they experienced so it would n’t go undocumented, especially as it took place in an area that is no longer accessible to rights groups or journalists, despite the risk of being caught and returned to Myanmar by the Bangladeshi authorities.

” My heart is broken. Nowadays, I’ve lost anything. I do n’t know why I survived”, Nisar says.

As the shooting increased close to his Rakhine home, he sold his land and home. But the issue intensified faster than he expected, and on the morning of 5 August, the family decided to leave Myanmar.

He is crying as he points to his mother’s body in one of the movies:” My child died in my hands saying Allah’s title. She looks but calm, like she’s sleeping. She loved me but much”.

He also mentions his wife and sister, both of whom were seriously hurt but still alive when the picture was captured on camera. Because the weapons were also falling, he had to make the agonizing decision to leave them behind. They eventually passed away, he discovered.

” There was nowhere left that was healthy, so we ran to the valley to cross over to Bangladesh”, Fayaz says. Fayaz gave all of his wealth to a fisherman to transport them across the valley after the gunfire and weapons had spread from village to village.

Devastated and unhappy, he holds up a picture of his father’s wounded brain.

” If the Arakan Army did n’t fire at us, then who did”? he asks. I am aware that the Arakan Army was present where the weapons came from. Or was it” torn falling from the sky”?

These charges raise serious questions about the Arakan Army, which claims to represent every member of Rakhine’s population in a revolutionary action.

The AA, a member of the larger Three Brotherhood Alliance of military militants in Myanmar, has made significant gains since late last year in opposition to the military.

However, the army’s costs have added new problems to Rohingyas, who have previously claimed they were being violently recruited by the junta to combat the AA.

This has strained now subpar relations between the two communities and made Rohingya civilians prone to punishment as a result of the Rohingya militant group ARSA’s decision to unite itself with the coup against the Rakhine insurgents.

One veteran of the 5 August attack claimed that ARSA extremists who had allied themselves with the coup had been among the frightened crowd, which might have led to the attack.

There was a significant usage of power, according to the statement. There were children, girls, the elderly that were killed that morning. It was also indiscriminate”, says John Quinley, a chairman of the human rights team Fortify Rights, which has been investigating the incident.

” So that would lead us to conclude that there are valid grounds to believe that the 5 August incident occurred. The Arakan Army may be subject to criminal justice, and top Arakan Army commanders may be held responsible.

The Rohingya group is at a perilous time right now. More than a million of them fled to Bangladesh in 2017, where they continue to be restricted to densely-packed, dirty camps.

More people have been arriving in recent months as a result of the Rakhine combat, but it’s no longer 2017, when Bangladesh’s borders were opened. The government has stated that it is against the law to accept any more Rohingyas.

So survivors who can find the money to pay boatmen and traffickers must pass through Bangladeshi border guards and chance their luck with locals, or hide in Rohingya camps. The BBC was told it would cost$ 600,000 ($ 411 ) per person.

The frontier guards gave Fayaz and his family a meal when they arrived in Bangladesh on August 6 before loading them onto a vessel and returning them.

” We spent two days upright with no food or water”, he says. I pleaded with some of the others on the boat to provide my daughters a few cakes from the boxes they had and gave them water from the river to drink.

On their next test, they entered Bangladesh. But at least two canoes have capsized because of congestion. One person, a lady with 10 kids, said she had managed to hide her home during the attack, but five of her children drowned when their boat overturned.

” My spirit was surrounded by my kids,” I said. When I think of them, I want to die”, she says, weeping.

Her granddaughter, a wide-eyed eight-year-old child, sits beside her. Both his younger brother and parents passed away.

What about those who were forgotten, though? Although the Maungdaw telephone and internet connections have been down for weeks, the BBC finally got in touch with one man who wanted to remain unnamed for safety.

He claimed that the Arakan Army has forced us to leave our homes and that they are keeping us in universities and temples. In a small apartment, I am being cared for by six different people.

In response to fighting between the military and the Arakan Army, the organization reported to the BBC that it had rescued 20, 000 residents from the area. It said it was providing them with foods and health care, and include that” these activities are conducted for the safety and security of these people, not as forced evictions”.

The caller rejected their assertions. The Arakan Army has promised to take us if we attempt to leave. We are running out of food and drugs. I am ill, my family is unwell. A lot of people have vomiting and are vomiting”.

He broke down, pleading for help:” Tens of thousands of Rohingya are under risk around. If you can, please preserve us”.

Across the river in Bangladesh, Nisar looks up at Myanmar. He can see the beach where the murderer’s community was killed.

” I never want to go back”.

Aamir Peerzada and Sanjay Ganguly provided extra monitoring.

* Brands have been changed on demand