"When Wasiyat Khan was woken up by a loud explosion in the middle of the night, he thought the mountains had burst and a landslide was on its way. Accompanied by his family, Wasiyat, a shepherd from Roshan valley of Ghizer, in northern Pakistan's mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region, had taken his livestock to elevated land for grazing on a sojourn during the warmer months."
"At more than 3,000 metres in the darkness of the night, outside help was impossible to get. He immediately jumped across boulders and reached a designated spot where he could get mobile phone signals and alerted the villagers, who numbered about 300. Within 30 minutes, we got a call back saying the villagers had evacuated safely and no lives were lost, Wasiyat told local media."
"While they were safe, we were left with nothing, not even a matchstick to keep us warm near the glaciers. It was very cold and we were suffering. When we were rescued hours later and taken back to the village, we found out that all our houses and land were covered by mud, but no lives were lost."
A glacier burst in Gilgit-Baltistan triggered a glacial lake outburst flood that swept away temporary shelters and inundated villages. A shepherd alerted about 300 villagers after climbing to a spot with mobile signal; residents evacuated and no lives were lost, but homes and land were buried in mud. Northern Pakistan hosts an estimated 13,000 glaciers and GLOFs are common; the NDMA warns that accelerating glacier melt and changing snowfall patterns increase risks. Despite large investments in early-warning systems, communities report material losses, cold exposure, and reliance on local evacuation efforts, eroding confidence in formal preparedness and response.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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