2. Could the Sikkim disaster have been averted?

| Oct 5, 2023, 22:37 IST

Flash flood

An outburst in Sikkim’s South Lhonak Lake on the night of October 3-4, triggered a flash flood in the Teesta river basin, leaving 14 people dead and 102 others, including 22 army personnel, missing.
The Chungthang dam, the largest hydropower project in Sikkim, was also breached.

There was a warning

A study by an international team of researchers, published in the journal Geomorphology, warned two years ago that the South Lhonak Lake in Sikkim may burst in the future and significantly impact the downstream region.
The researchers, including those from IIT, Roorkee, and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, worked on this study.

Signs of an approaching danger

The 2021 study highlighted that South Lhonak Lake had witnessed significant growth in the past decades due to glacial retreat. This meant there were increased chances of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF).
The researchers found that while these lakes are mainly located in remote and unsettled mountain valleys, far-reaching GLOFs may claim lives and damage assets up to tens of kilometres downstream.

What are GLOFs

A greater danger

The GLOF that led to disaster in Sikkim may just be an indication of the danger such an event poses to the lives of about 30 lakh Indians living in vulnerable areas of the six Himalayan states and Union Territories — J&K, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

Scientists watching

The first global assessment of such areas, done by an international team led by scientists at UK’s Newcastle University, flagged about this danger in February talking about the risk of flooding due to GLOF.
India and Pakistan together make up one-third of the total number of people globally exposed to such phenomena.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, also underlined that the population exposed to GLOFs increases with distance from a glacial lake.

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