As dawn broke over Javed Rahi’s Pakistani mountain village, a loud boom shattered the silence and a torrent of water came cascading down from the melting glacier nearby, followed by a thick cloud of smoke.
Rahi, a retired maths teacher, had been due to attend his nephew’s wedding the day the flood rushed through the village of Hassanabad.
“I expected women and children to sing and dance… Instead I heard them screaming in terror,” the 67-year-old said.
“It was like doomsday.”
The flood — which occurred as a heatwave was gripping South Asia in May — swept away nine homes in the village and damaged half a dozen more.
The water also washed away two small hydro plants and a bridge that connected the remote community to the outside world.
Pakistan is home to more than 7,000 glaciers, more than anywhere else on Earth outside the poles.
Rising global temperatures linked to climate change are causing the glaciers to rapidly melt, creating thousands of glacial lakes.
The government has warned that 33 of these lakes — all located in the spectacular Himalaya, Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges that intersect in Pakistan — are at risk of bursting and releasing millions of cubic metres of water and debris in just a few hours, like in Hassanabad.
At least 16 such glacial lake outburst floods linked to heatwaves have occurred this year already, compared with an average of five or six per year, the Pakistani government said earlier this week.
The devastation caused by such floods makes recovery for impacted communities an arduous task.
After disaster struck Hassanabad, Rahi and fellow villagers who lost their homes had to move to a nearby camp for displaced people.
Inside their makeshift tents are the few belongings they managed to salvage and mattresses to sleep on.
“We never thought we would fall from riches to rags,” Rahi said.
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