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The destroyed construction site of the Tapovan Vishnugad Hydroelectric Power Plant
Photo:
Dan Shugar, University of Calgary / Planet Labs
Over the months the cracks got bigger and bigger without anyone noticing.
Then, on the morning of February 7th, a huge mass of rock and ice slipped on the 6,309-meter-high Nanda Ghunti, a peak in the western Himalayas belonging to India.
Its dimensions are difficult to imagine: the package is about half a kilometer wide at the top, it weighs millions of tons.
From 5600 meters, the masses plunge more or less vertically down to a height of 3800 meters.
On their almost two kilometers in free fall, they are accelerated more and more.
On the ground, with infernal force, they hit a moraine landscape that was also formed by earlier landslides.
From there they let an avalanche of rock, water and ice shoot down into the valley.
Settlements in the valley such as Raini village are destroyed.
At the downhill construction site of the Tapovan Vishnugad Hydroelectric Power Plant, one does not notice anything of the dramatic events at first.
A 520 megwatt hydropower plant is to be built here on the Dhauliganga River.
Construction work has been going on since 2006, but progress is slow.
Among other things, several groundwater inflows are to blame.
So the drilling of the kilometer-long tunnel was delayed again and again.
But work is still going on this Sunday - and the tunnels become a deadly trap for members of the construction team.
Glaciers in the Himalayas have been shrinking for years
Video recordings show the dramatic moment when a massive wave after the landslide reached the construction site and devastated everything there.
A satellite from the private earth observation company »Planet« also documented the destruction of the facility from space.
Two bridges were completely washed away by the flood and the dam's concrete structures were badly damaged.
It is unclear whether and how the project will continue.
A total of around 30 people were killed in the severe landslide and around 200 are missing.
Some of them are workers from the hydropower plant construction site who were trapped in the tunnels.
The extent to which the disaster is a direct consequence of man-made climate change remains to be investigated.
What is certain is that there is a clear connection between the retreat of glaciers and the increase in landslide areas.
This increases the likelihood of debris avalanches.
The glaciers in the Himalayas have been shrinking for years, losing an average of eight billion tons of ice per year.
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