International experts explain rescue challenges at mudslide-hit China-Nepal border

Over a week after a catastrophic mudslide, triggered by a high-altitude glacier collapse in Nepal, struck Gyirong Port on the China-Nepal border in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region on August 26, search and rescue operations there have kicked into higher gear.

Chinese rescue teams fully reopened the only land route to Gyirong Port on Wednesday morning after overcoming challenges such as damaged roads, rugged terrain and other obstacles, allowing rescuers, relief supplies, equipment and heavy machinery to reach the core disaster area by road to carry out more intensive rescue operations.

Rescuers still face difficult conditions in the disaster area, with teams deploying ground radar and aerial surveys to monitor slope deformation and other potential secondary disasters and help ensure the safety of search and rescue operations.

Against such complex and volatile disaster conditions, international disaster management experts have highlighted the unprecedented difficulties of the ongoing border rescue operations while acknowledging China's robust emergency response capacity.

Akhilesh Surjan, a specialist in humanitarian and disaster emergency management at Australia's Charles Darwin University, stressed the necessity of sustained, meticulous search efforts amid lingering uncertainties.

In highly complex cascading catastrophes like this cross-border glacial mudslide, life-search operations must continue as long as credible survival possibilities remain, Surjan said, adding that the absence of survivors in one spot cannot rule out survival chances in other buried areas. 

"Every search decision carries profound humanitarian and diplomatic implications for cross-border disaster relief," Surjan told The Straits Times.

Winston Chang, former global lead of the UN International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, pointed out that the unique geological aftermath of glacial mudslides creates enormous operational hurdles, even for well-equipped rescue forces such as China's.

Powerful glacial mudslides can sweep buildings and debris several kilometers downstream, completely altering the original terrain. Rescuers face great uncertainty over what lies beneath layers of deep, fluid mud and mixed rock fragments, Chang explained.

He added that the unstable terrain creates a "logistical nightmare" for on-site operations.

Specialized safety equipment, including fixed anchor points and safety ropes, is mandatory for every forward movement, he said, stressing that safety management stands as the top priority throughout the entire rescue process.

Echoing the view, Surjan noted that the ongoing rainfall, poor visibility, fragile mountain slopes and frequent secondary geological hazards constitute compound risks that threaten rescue personnel and slow down operational progress.

Beyond on-site rescue difficulties, the rare, sudden nature of high-altitude glacial disasters also exposes systemic gaps in global early warning systems, according to newly published research.

An article published in Nature on Wednesday highlighted the urgent need to upgrade future monitoring and forecasting systems.

The disaster proved difficult to predict because it was triggered by the sudden failure of a high-altitude glacier-rock system rather than typical signals, such as extreme rainfall or rising glacial lakes, according to the article.

Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech, emphasized the limitations of traditional ground-monitoring technologies in tackling emerging climate-driven geological risks.

Conventional monitoring systems fail to detect early signs of high-altitude glacial-rock slope instability. There is an urgent demand for integrated, space-based observation networks to fill the gap, Shirzaei told Nature.

The Nature study further proposed a systematic solution, "What is still largely missing is a regional satellite-based system that routinely searches for accelerating glacier and rock-slope deformation and then connects that information directly to downstream flood and avalanche modeling."