According to a report, filed by the news agency Reuters, Sikkim plunged into chaos on Wednesday as floods spurred by heavy rain and an avalanche killed at least 40 people. It was one of the worst disasters in the region in 50 years.

Meanwhile, authorities claim that a camera to monitor Lhonak Lake’s level and weather instruments was installed in September as the first part of the early warning system for glacial floods.

ALSO READ: Sikkim flash floods Updates

Scientists even noted that if fully operational, the warning system could have given people more time to evacuate, though the details of the Lhonak Lake warning system have not previously been reported.

“It’s quite absurd, really,” Reuters quoted geoscientist Simon Allen of the University of Zurich who is involved with the project as saying, who added, “The fact it happened just two weeks after our team was there was completely bad luck”.

Adding more, he said that they planned to add a tripwire sensor that would trigger if the lake was about to burst. That would typically be connected to an alert system that would warn residents to immediately evacuate.

“The Indian government was not prepared to do that this year, so it was being done as a two-step process,” he said.

According to simulations carried out by scientists during planning for an early warning system at Lhonak Lake, authorities and residents would have had a warning time of 90 minutes. It would also have allowed a hydropower station to open gates earlier.

“90 minutes is certainly long enough that people could have been safely evacuated and the gates of the hydropower dam opened,” said Allen.

In the meantime, the exact design of the system was still in development and the installed monitoring devices were supposed to send data to authorities, but the camera lost power for an unknown reason in late September.

With climate change warming high mountain regions, many communities are facing dangerous glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Lakes holding water from melted glaciers can overfill and burst, sending torrents rushing down mountain valleys.

As per 2022 research, over 200 such lakes now pose a very high hazard to Himalayan communities in India, Pakistan, China, Nepal, and Bhutan.

Glacial flood early warning systems have been deployed in China, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bhutan in recent years.

The Indian government was planning to begin the first early warning systems for glacial floods at Lhonak Lake and another at nearby Shako Cho in Sikkim, before expanding to other dangerous lakes, added the report citing government sources.

Kamal Kishore, a senior official at India’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said India plans to install early warning systems at several other glacial lakes.

With agency inputs.

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Updated: 06 Oct 2023, 08:53 PM IST