DRRM: Landslides and infrastructure in Nepal

For this week DRRM, I am taking an example of Sunkoshi landslide and its impact on infrastructure. Due to heavy rainfall, in the early morning of August 2, 2014, a landslide occurred at Jure village of Sindhupalchowk district, the northern part of the country. It killed 156 people and blocked the Sunkoshi river forming an artificial lake. About 2 dozens houses were swept away by the landslide and 2.6-megawatt hydropower station was completely submerged in the backflow of the river. The lake was about 3 km long and an estimated 7 million cubic meters volume was stored in the lake which lasted for 38 days. It destroyed about 5 kilometers of Araniko highway, the main and only one trade link to China. The average trade from this route is about US$ 400,000 per day which means US$ 15.2 million were lost. It also damaged power supply infrastructure of several hydropower projects inducing more power cut hours in the capital and other parts of the country.

Landslide:
Source: http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2014/08/02/sunkoshi-1/

The artificial lake submerging hydropower station.
Source: https://twitter.com/bewitchkapil

Landslide is the deadliest natural disasters in the country. Moreover, due to fragile geology and human occupation and their interactions have made the middle Himalayan region more vulnerable to natural disasters. Landslides and floods are common phenomena during the monsoon season. Particularly, Sunkoshi valley has experienced numerous large floods and landslides in the last three decades. In addition, the settlement along the highway which runs in the bank of Sunkoshi river has been dramatically increased in last two decades.

A landslide above Jure in 2013; the same landslide after the event on August 2, 2014.
Source: http://www.icimod.org/?q=14356

Although we cannot control natural hazards such as landslides and floods, certainly there are many ways to mitigate their adverse impacts on lives, livelihoods, and physical infrastructures. For this purpose, the information and knowledge from the past events would be of immense help to support disaster risk reduction. Such information would be invaluable for the preparation of hazard map, hazard zonation, and land use planning for the future. Also, with the help of remote sensing and automatic weather station, meteorological and hydrological variables can be measured. Such data can eventually be feed into hydrological models to prepare and install early warning systems in the region. Such activities would increase the community resilience and be prepared for the future disaster to save lives and economy in the tiny Himalayan country.