Deadly, but beautiful: lake on the Hunza river

ya best idea is to intoduce six heavy water moters and extract water though hoge pipes

Thankz God it is not summar time. the water level go very fast. hopefully the govt ll find a sulation.

the lake seems beautiful for visitors and CM GB and the governement but this is hell for people of Shishket. It is the duty of Govt to make arrangements for quick release of water. becuse after few days the bridge between Gulmit and Shishket will cover by the water.

Great work Zulfi as always

ALLAH khair kare.. dua hi kar sakte hai.

Islamabad based members of civil society from Hunza/Gojal and Ghazir met Gen Farooq in Islamabad to get insight on the progress on rehabilitation of Attaabad affacties and mitigation measures up and down stream at Hunza river. Gen Farooq had visisted the Disater site on the 5th of January.

He said minimizing potential loss of humen and property at up and down streams of Hunza river is the priority of the government.
He said the focus is to ensure release of smooth flow of water from the lake. He informed us about deploying team of experts including Army and WAPDA professionls at the site.

The heli sorties will continue back and forth to Gojal for transporting people and other essential items. He also said opening Chinese border for logistices and other essential items could be an option.

On our request he did ask his staff to put the progress on relief, recovrey, rehabilitation and mitigation measures on releasing water from the lake on their offfical website.
Furthermore so far 1200 people have been transported both way of the disaster site.
Darjat

Its really appreciated for Good Suggestions, but now we need to do in practical because this is not a time for suggestion. After one week we will be unable to do the best. please if you people have approuch to the Govt. offical bring Equipments from them ASAP. other wise we will never control of this huge Lake. Please do the Best ASAP.

Regards,

Sher Karim Kawish
Eni Pakistan

We must help for all those victims, who are in trouble Thank you Zulfiqar bahi for you effort, this is really appreciate able, and please update some pictures of lake if possible,

Hunza Lake- destroy it before to save Tarabala Dam
by
Arshad H Abbasi
ahabasi@gmail.com
It was in the 3rd week of July 2004, while traveling toward Khunjerab, that we stayed for a few hours at Atabad . The locals drew our attention towards a ‘crack’ in the slope above their village. The crack approx 1 1/2feet wide also passed through some of the hamlets. It was generally felt, that the November 2002 earthquake caused this crack, while some felt that the heavy snow accumulation of glaciers could have put pressure on the slope. Authorities were informed by the locals of the crack, which kept on widening, but no one took notice of it. I personally felt, that if no remedial measures are taken, this huge chunk of mountain side would one day slide into the river. No interest was shown at any level, and ignored was the willingness of the local people to be shifted to the Punjab.
It was most disturbing therefore, when on 4th January 2010 the news came, that the mountainside had actually collapsed. 13 people dead and a steadily rising artificial lake, upstream of the blockage, continues to inundate vast stretches of agricultural lands, orchards and home, the only source of livelihood for thousands of people. The increasing water pressure has the potentials of breaching the massive debris, which has dammed the natural flow of the Hunza River for 2 km, if rapid preventive measures are not undertaken. The effect a sudden breach would have downstream is unimaginable, as the Tarbela Dam is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy, its agriculture and hydropower. Due to the loose nature of the debris which at its lowest point is 100m above the riverbed and the absence of controlled spillway, this landslide dams may fail without any warning and can carry massive sediment (debris) with it. A common failure scenario may occur with a variety of failure processes that includes overtopping, seepage and sudden sliding caused by piping but there is greatly that it would surely burst.
As the debris blocking the Hunza River is mainly fine-grained material, boulders and pebbles which do not have the capacity to support this dam much longer, especially since piping has already started. It is not unknown, that a force of water can destabilize massive deposits and cause extreme devastation downstream.
The Indus River is one of the world’s largest rivers in term of water sediment loads and this massive debris (sedimentation) would have serious impact on theTarbala Dam, as it could completely dislodging the vast delta which dramatically expanded over the past decades at the mouth of the Indus. Should the dam created by the debris breach, it is said, that flash floods with a height of between 60 to 80 feet would create disaster along the embankments of the Indus River.
In other countries, risk analysis study would immediately have been undertaken by a team comprising Remote Sensing, GIS, Hydrology and Risk Management experts to quantify the potential risk in case of a breach in the artificial lake/dam. There is a urgent need to develop a high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM) to determine longitudinal profiles and cross-sections of the river at 500 meters interval up to Junction of Hunza and Gilgit River and than through to Besham Qila. Simultaneously a team of Metrological Department and WAPDA, needs to conduct a quick but comprehensive study using remote sensing images, digital elevation and housing data, hydrological and spatial analyses to quantify the potential risk in terms of affected population size and estimated property losses.
Emphasis needs to be placed on the characteristics of the breach, i.e. the geometry of a possible breach and how long it would take to develop needs to be formulated. Different types of dams tend to collapse in different ways and hence breach characteristics have to be defined first. If this dam/lake isl not thoroughly assess and properly disposed of, it would be catastrophe for downstream areas including a great threat to Trabala Dam.
The loose nature of Attabad-Hunza landslide and with the absence of controlled spillway, this landslide dam may fail without any warning and can lead to downstream flooding with massive sediment (debris) flow. A common failure scenario could occur by overtopping, seepage and sudden sliding through excessive piping. Priority needs therefore be given to engineered breaching with precise technique to control sediment flow consider, before we have another “Zalzal Lake”. The “Zalzal Lake” was formed due to earthquake-2005 in Azad Kashmir and on February 09, 2010 its sudden failure caused water flooding onto the lower areas.
The best model for our experts is the case of the Tangjiashan Lake. It was created during 2008 Sichuan earthquake in a extremely rugged terrain of Tangjiashan Mountain in China. The water was level rising at the rate of 8 feet day. When the capacity of lake was reached more than 200000 acre-feet Chinese engineers, scientists, and army considered three options. One was to use engineering techniques, including blasting, to release the water. The second was to reinforce the dam during the flood season. The third was to restructure the quake lake into a reservoir. All three schemes had evaluated after the speedy risk analysis study, including development of a high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM). After assessing all threats more than 250,000 people had been evacuated from downstream area in anticipation of the Tangjiashan Lake dam bursting.
In May 2008, before start of flood season it was finally decided to breach the dam. Chinese army took ten days to drain water from the lake. Chinese army engineers used recoil-less guns, bazookas and dynamite to blast boulders and other obstructions in the channel and final massive blasts broke through the “bottleneck” in the spillway, the water outflow speeded up drastically. So the Tangjiashan Lake was emptied thus succeeded to eliminate a huge threat of a disaster.
The need of the hour is to predict and avert colossal losses in landslide prone areas of Pakistan, a comprehensive landslide hazard analysis and mapping ought to prepare at the earliest. Who will do it? For this Government has to transform Nation Disaster Management Authority into a proactive organization.

the gravity of situation is so tense coz the whole lot of terbela dam is in danger . As most of people think the water presure will cause the damadge to terbela dam if the lake goes off but the real danger to dam is from tones and tones of debries which will flow in water like torpedos. Inshallah a solution will be thought but i have only one question to ask govt of pakistan…..”where were the monitoring agencies of water and power development department when this lake was farming up?” the answer to this question is ” when the lake was farming at that time raja pervez ashraf was in some airconditioned hall of hotel attending some foolish seminar and telling all lies that he ll finish the load shedding …”
wake up my brothers please wake up before its too late….

This is the blessing in disguise and a gift of ALLAH Subhana tala to the people of this country ,because our governments are bunch of idiots trators and anti Pakistan and its people and if we axpect this sort of water storage from our govt.they cant do it in hundred years to come,so ALLAH looking at us have given this gift of water and its our own water not indian water for which we are crying since last year and now when water is given to us we are now shouting for the 2 or 3 villages ,now ask a question from all of you guys what is important for us 2 villages or water for all pakistan so for the bigger national intrests we have to sacrifice small things and why Govt.cant provide them new homes to the people for villages and insert a spillway in this natural GOD gifted Dam,it dont happen with many in the world this shows us that we peopel of Pakistanb are still dear to ALLAH Subhana tala who gave us this lovely and life giving gift, we can easily throw the water into rivers like Hunza ,Kunhar to run this water down to the dry rivers of apkistana and run our agriculture and life ,we can also generate electricity from this natural DAM.
instead of shouting and crying we must all Bow down to ALLAH Subhana and make spilways to this lake and let it like this by making walls to this lake and make it a permanent water rosevoiur.

when China made 3 gordges dam one of the biggest dam in world which took 650 villages and 3 big cities in the dams area all the world shouted against it but as it was in the intrest of China and its peopel they didnt took even notice of any human rights or anyone in the world sayinmg that this is our national intrest and noone is allowed to say anything about it and made that dam and now have 1 million MW of electricity out of it.
so please thank to ALLAH and then pray that may ALALH give us more water resorts like this because we cant axpect this sort of national intrest from this slaves of America and Hindus to whom we call Govt of Pakistan.

me zeeshan frm gilgit baldistan and i m very thnks ful to you all people of pakistan but out govt is silent the question is that y our govt is silent y our govt should not try to relase the water frm lake thiz is very critical situatin and we must be think about atabad people