The BBCKomal’s morning view was of jagged mountains, the river rushing dozens of meters below the family home on the mountains. That was until the water became a channel and the ground slipped from under their feet.
“It was a sunny day,” says 18-year-old Komal.
For generations, his family lived among gardens and green fields in the heart of the Hunza Valley in the Karakoram Mountains of the Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region.
“Everything was normal in the morning, I went to school, but then my teacher told me that the Hasanabad bridge had collapsed,” says Komal.
At the top, a glacial lake had formed, then suddenly erupted – water, rock and debris falling into the canyon and accumulating rapidly. The ground was shaking so violently that some people thought an earthquake had occurred.
When the flood hit the cement bridge connecting the two parts of the village, it was reduced to rubble.
“When I came home, people were taking whatever they could from their homes,” says Komal. She grabbed books, laundry, anything she could carry, but remembers thinking that there was no way over water with their house so far that it couldn’t be affected.
That was until they received a phone call from the other side of the valley. Their neighbors saw water washing away the hillside of their home.
Then the houses started collapsing.
“I remember my aunt and uncle were still inside their house when the flood came and washed away the whole kitchen,” she says. The family made it to safe land, but their home disappeared over the edge.
Today, past the gray rubble and dust, there are still coat hooks on the wall, a few tiles in the bathroom, the glass window long gone. It’s been two years, but nothing has grown on the desolate rock that used to be Kamal’s garden in Hassanabad.
“It used to be all green,” she says. “When I go to this place, I remember my childhood memories, the time I spent here. But the barren places, they hurt me, they make me sad.”
Researchers say climate change is changing the landscape of Gilgit-Baltistan and neighboring Chitral. This is only part of the area that some call the Third Pole. A place with more ice than any other part of the world outside the polar regions.
If current retreat continues, Himalayan glaciers could lose two-thirds of their volume by the end of this century. According to the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development.
According to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), more than 48,000 people in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral are considered to be at high risk of lake bursting or landslides. Some, such as the village of Badswat in neighboring Ghazar district, are at such risk that they are being driven out entirely to protect relatives, making it impossible to stay in their homes.
“Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of disasters across the region,” says Didar Karim, program coordinator at the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat.
“These areas are very exposed. With the rise in temperature, there’s more water discharge and then more flooding. It’s damaging infrastructure, houses, agricultural land. Every infrastructure is damaged by these increased floods. has arrived
“The rainfall pattern is changing. The snowfall pattern is changing and then the glacier melt is also changing. So it’s changing the dynamics of the hazards.
Moving populations is complicated. Not only have many people lived on their land for centuries and are loathe to leave it, but finding somewhere else that is safe and has access to reliable water is complicated.
“We have very limited land and limited resources. We don’t have common lands to move people to,” says Zubair Ahmad, assistant director of the Disaster Management Authority in Hunza and Nagar districts.
“I can say that after five or 10 years, it will be very difficult for us to even survive. Maybe after a few years or decades people will realize but by then it will be too late. So I understand. That this is the right time, even though we are late, there is still time to think about it.
Pakistan is one of the countries most affected by climate change, although it is solely responsible for it. Less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“We cannot stop these incidents, because this is a global problem,” says Mr Ahmed. “All we can do is mitigate it and prepare our people to face such eventualities.”
In the village of Pasu, just an hour’s drive from Hassanabad, they are practicing evacuation. Prepare for potential disaster. The population knows that if there is an emergency, if roads and bridges are closed, destroyed or washed away, it can take days for outside help to arrive.
Trained in first aid, river crossings and high mountain rescue, they practice village evacuations a few times a year, with volunteers carrying the injured on stretchers and bandaging mock wounds.
Ejaz has been a volunteer for the past 20 years, with many stories of rescuing hikers lost in the mountains. But he, too, worries about the number of threats and the increasing unpredictability of the weather in the area he calls home.
“The weather right now, we can’t say what will happen,” he says. “Even five years ago, the weather didn’t change that much. Now after half an hour we can’t say what it will be.
He also knows that his team of volunteers can only do so much.
“Unfortunately, if there’s a flood and it’s a heavy flood, there’s nothing we can do,” he says. “The area is completely washed away. If it’s small, we can help people survive and avoid flooded areas.”
There are other mitigation measures across the region; Stone and wire barriers to try to slow down flood waters, systems to monitor glacier melt, rainfall and water levels, speakers installed in villages to alert the community in case of danger. But many who work here say they need more resources.
“We have installed early warning systems in some valleys,” says Mr Ahmed. “They were identified by the Pakistan Meteorological Department and they gave us a list of about 100 valleys. But due to limited resources, we are able to intervene in only 16.
They say they are in talks to expand it further.
A few houses down from Komal lives Sultan Ali, now in his 70s.
Their granddaughters bring us a plate of pears they’ve picked from their garden as we sit on the traditional bunk bed and talk.
He knows his house could also disappear into the valley if another flood hits, but says he has nowhere to go.
“As I approach the end of my life, I feel helpless,” he tells me. The children are very worried, asking where will we stay?
“We have no option. If there is a flood, it will wash away everything and we can’t do anything about it. I can’t blame anyone. It’s just our fate.”
We see her grandchildren playing tag in the shade of the garden. The weather, the snow, the environment is changing around them. What will this earth be like when they grow up?
Even Komal is not sure what the future holds.
“I don’t think we’ll be here forever,” she says. “The situation is already clear. But the question for us is that we have nowhere else to go. Only this.”
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