A glacier breaking in the Himalayas has destroyed a dam and caused a deadly flood.

After a dam in Northern India broke under an immense flood on February 7, 26 people are dead and 165 missing. The flood has been attributed to the Nanda Devi glacier, a portion of which snapped off and fell from a high Himalayan peak into a mountain stream, causing it to flood both the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers. It completely destroyed a hydroelectric dam on the Alaknanda and damaged a dam on the Dhauliganga. 

“We thought that the whole world would drown in this,” says Ratan Singh Rana, a resident of the village of Raini on the banks of the Dhauliganga. “I was thinking that today is the end, that we would leave this world today.” The damage to the village was relatively light compared to that of the hydroelectric dams, where many workers are still trapped in tunnels by mud and debris.

The breaking of the Nanda Devi glacier is largely caused by global warming. Anil Joshi, an environmentalist studying the Himalayas, has confirmed this saying that, “At this time, a glacier avalanche indicates climate change. Temperature variation caused the detachment of glaciers, and that damaged the hydro dam at Rishiganga.” 

With at least 165 people still missing, a rescue operation has been launched to rescue dam workers trapped underground. Sadly, as global warming progresses, environmental disasters like this will become more and more common, with the Himalayas being a particularly vulnerable area.