Everest’s Sherpas fear their homeland is at risk of washing away

Since then, the impacts of global warming on Himalayan glaciers and lakes has only become more striking – and locals say some damages from floods are now irreparable.

While the Thame river used to flow through the left part of the Khumbu valley, Friday’s flood has made it change course. Now it flows right through the village, claiming almost half of the land.

“Much of the remaining land now is full of debris and boulders,” Ms Doma Sherpa said.

“This is not like rebuilding the houses destroyed by the quake. When you have no land left, what can you build on?”

The flood has also damaged the reservoir of the only hydropower station that provides electricity to the region.

The station stopped functioning after the disaster led to deposition of mud and debris in the reservoir.

“As a result, power supply has been cut off, and because of that telecommunication systems were also not functioning,” Mingma Sherpa, chair of a youth club at Namche, a major tourist spot near Thame, said.

“The area has remained cut off from the outside world since the disaster struck. This is quite scary.”

“We had been worrying about slow onset impacts of climate change, like dwindling water resources, but this disaster has shown how unsafe and vulnerable we are.”

Government officials are aware of locals’ fears.

Anil Pokhrel, head of NDRRMA, said the authority is now forming a team of experts that will “study the risks posed by the three remaining lakes upstream of Thame village and find out if the downstream settlement areas are safe for people to live in or not”.

“We are also working on disaster risk reduction in the region,” she added.

Members of local Sherpa communities, however, say they’ve seen more talk and less action over the years when it comes to dealing with risks from glacial lake outbursts.

“We hear all big plans, especially during conferences, and soon the plans are forgotten,” Ms Doma Sherpa said.

“But we can’t forget about what this flood has done – and that there are other lakes lurking up there that can unleash disasters on us anytime.”