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Late last month, residents of the tiny village of Hassanabad, in Hunza district, noticed floodwaters quickly rising in the stream that runs near their homes, carrying water from the towering Shishper glacier.
“The flows became so high that they eroded the land and reached 10 feet from my family’s home. We evacuated,” said Ghulam Qadir, a resident of the village.The ensuing flood, carrying huge boulders from the melting glacier, demolished the cherry, apricot and walnut orchards many families depend on, and left homes cracked, 16 families in tents and local irrigation and hydropower systems damaged.
The flood water broke all the retaining walls that were built last year in order to protect the village,” Qadir told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone. “Now there is a ravine right next to our houses and we live in dread of another flood.”
