{"id":15003,"date":"2015-04-30T08:34:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T08:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=15003"},"modified":"2015-04-30T08:34:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T08:34:13","slug":"bhote-kosi-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/04\/30\/bhote-kosi-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper Bhote Kosi: videos of the damage and rockfalls in northern Nepal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Upper Bhote Kosi<\/h5>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelastresort.com.np\/\">The Last Resort<\/a> is a bungy jumping centre located in the Upper <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bhote_Koshi\">Bhote Kosi<\/a> valley northeast of Kathmandu.\u00a0 This is to the north of the area affected by the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2014\/08\/18\/sunkoshi-landslide-18-08\/\">massive landslide last summer<\/a>. This is an area that I know well as we have used the resort as a field base for many years. Although there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to the nature of the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/04\/29\/langtang-1\/\">impact of the earthquake<\/a> in this area, it is reasonable to assume that the effects have been very severe.<\/p>\n<p>Bhuwan Sharma was at the resort at the time of the earthquake, and has posted a series of videos on his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCCuWFqY2hyMHIBY5wVckJww\">youtube channel<\/a>.\u00a0 I thought I&#8217;d highlight two of them here.\u00a0 First, this one shows rockfall activity in the Bhote Kosi gorge during what I assume is an aftershock:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q_9GyhBN0kA\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Note the extensive rockfall activity both upstream and downstream of the bridge across the Bhote Kosi.\u00a0 If you look carefully you can also see the substantial piles of debris in the river channel from the earlier shocks:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/04\/15_04-Bhote-Kosi-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-15004\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/04\/15_04-Bhote-Kosi-1.jpg\" alt=\"Bhote Kosi\" width=\"371\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/04\/15_04-Bhote-Kosi-1.jpg 241w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/04\/15_04-Bhote-Kosi-1-233x300.jpg 233w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 371px) 100vw, 371px\" \/><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst this video shows the damage in the surrounding villages in the Upper Bhote Kosi valley:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_RPTzbbmdSk\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly there is extensive destruction to the houses, some of which have collapsed.\u00a0 This suggests that the damage in the Upper Bhote Kosi valley is likely to be very serious.\u00a0 This is important because the reported losses for this earthquake, although terrible, continue to be lower than we would have expected and seem to be at odds with reports from other parts of the mountain area.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/29\/dire-prospects-seen-when-the-full-nepal-earthquake-death-toll-is-tallied\/\">Others are equally confused as to what is going on &#8211; indeed some models suggest that the losses should be an order of magnitude higher<\/a>.\u00a0 It is very perplexing.\u00a0 Meanwhile, as usual the media seem to be fixated on individual rescues rather than on the big picture.\u00a0 Each of these &#8220;miracle&#8221; survival stories are wonderful, but to report them so assiduously is to miss the big picture in my view.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bhuwan Sharma has posted a series of videos on his youtube channel showing rockfalls and building damage in the Upper Bhote Kosi valley in Nepal<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":15004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,469,959,66,56,72],"class_list":["post-15003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-earthquake","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-nepal","tag-rockfall","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}