Komal’s morning view was of jagged, foreboding mountains, the river’s flow dozens of feet below the family home on the cliff. That was until the water became a flood and ripped the ground from under their feet.
“It was a sunny day,” says Komal, 18.
For generations, her family had lived among the orchards and green fields in the heart of the Hunza Valley in the Karakorum Mountains in the Pakistani-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region.
“In the morning everything was normal. I went to school,” says Komal, “but then my teacher told me that the Hassanabad Bridge had collapsed.”
A glacial lake had formed upstream and suddenly burst, sending water, boulders and debris rushing down the valley at an increasing rate. The ground shook so violently that some people thought there was an earthquake.
When the stream hit the concrete bridge connecting the two parts of the village, it turned into rubble.
A house in the damaged village of Hassanabad, its walls missing after the ground gave way [BBC]
“By the time I got home, people were taking everything out of their houses,” says Komal. She packed books, laundry, and whatever she could carry, but remembers thinking that because their house was so far above the water, it couldn’t possibly be affected.
That was until they got a call from the other side of the valley; their neighbors could see the water eroding the hill on which their house stood.
Then the houses started to collapse.
“I remember my aunt and uncle were still in their house when the flood came and washed away the entire kitchen,” she says. The family reached safe ground, but their homes disappeared over the edge.
Now when you walk through the gray rubble and dust, there are still coat hooks on the wall, a few tiles in the bathroom, a window whose glass is long gone. It’s been two years, but nothing has grown on the crumbling cliff that used to be Komal’s garden in Hassanabad.
“This used to be a green place,” she says. “When I visit this place, I think of my childhood memories, the time I spent here. But the dry places hurt me, they make me feel sad.’
Life in the region is precarious. Here you can see water from the Hopper Glacier flowing through the valley it has carved out [BBC]
Climate change is transforming the landscape in Gilgit-Baltistan and neighboring Chitral, researchers say. This is just part of an area some call the Third Pole; a place with more ice than any other part of the world outside the polar regions.
If current emissions continue, Himalayan glaciers could lose up to two-thirds of their volume by the end of this century, according to the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development.
According to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), more than 48,000 people in Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral are at high risk of a lake outburst or landslide. Some, like the village of Badswat in the neighboring Ghizer district, are in such danger that they are being evacuated entirely to relative safety, making it impossible to live in their homes.
“Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of disasters across the region,” said Deedar Karim, program coordinator of the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat.
“These areas are very vulnerable. With the increase in temperature there are more discharges (of water) and subsequently more floods. It causes damage to infrastructure, homes and agricultural lands; every infrastructure has been damaged by these increasing floods.
“The rain pattern is changing. The snowfall pattern changes and the glacier melting changes. So it changes the dynamics of hazards.”
Pakistan is among the countries in the world most at risk of glacial lake outbursts [BBC]
Moving populations is complicated; Not only have many spent centuries on their land and are reluctant to leave it, but finding another location that is safe and has access to reliable water is complicated.
“We have very limited land and limited resources. We have no common land where people can be transferred,” said Zubair Ahmed, deputy director of the Disaster Management Authority in Hunza and Nagar district.
“I can say that after five or ten years it will be very difficult for us to even survive. Maybe after a few years or decades people will realize it, but by then it will be too late. So I think this is the right time, although we are still late, but even now this is the time to think about it.”
Pakistan is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, although it is only responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“We cannot stop these events because this is a global problem,” Ahmed said. “All we can do is mitigate and prepare our people for such events.”
Ijaz is an emergency volunteer, trained in evacuations, first aid and mountain rescue [BBC]
In the village of Passu, just over an hour’s drive from Hassanabad, they are holding an evacuation exercise; preparation for possible destruction. The public knows that in an emergency it can take days for outside help to arrive if roads and bridges are blocked, damaged or swept away.
They are trained in first aid, river crossings and high mountain rescue. They practice evacuating the village a few times a year, with volunteers carrying the wounded on stretchers and bandaging mock wounds.
Ijaz has been a volunteer for twenty years and has many stories about rescuing lost hikers in the mountains. But he, too, is concerned about the number of hazards and increased unpredictability of weather in the area he calls home.
“The weather now, we just can’t say what will happen,” he says. “Even five years ago the weather didn’t change that much. Now after half an hour we can’t say what it will be.”
He also knows there is only so much his team of volunteers can do.
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do when the flood comes and it’s a bad flood,” he said. “The area has been completely washed away. If it is small, we can help people survive and escape from the flood areas.”
If there is an emergency, it can take days for outside help to arrive [BBC]
There are other mitigation measures in place across the region; stone and wire barriers to hold back floodwaters, systems to monitor glacier melting, rainfall and water levels, loudspeakers installed in villages to alert the community if danger threatens. But many who work here say they need more resources.
“We have installed early warning systems in some valleys,” says Mr Ahmed. “These were identified by the Pakistan Meteorological Department and they gave us a list of about 100 valleys. But due to limited resources, we can only intervene in sixteen cases.”
He says they are in discussions to expand this further.
Sultan Ali says he feels helpless; when the flood comes, it will take away everything [BBC]
A few doors down from Komal lives Sultan Ali, now in his seventies.
As we sit and chat on a traditional charpoy bed, his granddaughters bring us a plate of pears picked from their garden.
He knows that if another flood occurs, his house could also disappear into the valley, but says he has nowhere to go.
“As I approach the end of my life, I feel helpless,” he tells me. “The children are very worried, they ask where we are going to live?
“We have no options. When the flood comes, everything will disappear and there is nothing we can do about it. I can’t blame anyone; it’s just our destiny.”
Komal doesn’t think they can stay, but they have nowhere else to go [BBC]
We see his grandchildren playing tag in the shade of the orchard. The seasons, the ice and the environment change around them. What will this country be like when they are older?
Komal is also not sure what the future will bring.
“I don’t think we’ll be here forever,” she says. “The condition is already clear. But the question for us is that we have no other place to go. Only this.”
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