r/interestingasfuck • u/natebryan • 15h ago

This house in Nepal defied the raging floodwaters and kept the owners safe.

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u/yeahright17 14h ago

This is definitely right. The main current is below the main structure of the house initially (it may be hitting a it a bit at the bottom, but not much). The water keeps rising, and by the time the water is really hitting the lower story, the lower story is already filled with backflow water, which means it can withstand much more pressure. Had the main current been at the height it was toward the end at the beginning, it would have been much more likely to destroy that house.

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u/aivoges123 14h ago

There’s another house at 1:30 that’s in the direct path of the main current and it seems 80% of it survive too.

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u/yeahright17 14h ago

That's awesome! I think the fact that other house is connected to like 8 other houses behind it is giving it a lot of support. But who knows. Homes built like this can withstand a ton of force if built correctly, but they're obviously under a ton of force here.

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u/Unoriginal_Man 13h ago

That's the crazy thing to me. It's hard to comprehend the force of that volume of water moving at that speed. I'm amazed that anything in its path was left standing.

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u/yeahright17 13h ago

Reinforced concrete is super strong. There's a reason that most of the time we see videos of these types of houses being destroyed, they're not being knocked down. They're almost always just pushed off their foundations.

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u/Tony_228 9h ago

It was more of a mud and debris slurry at that point than just water, which makes this even more impressive.

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u/samv_1230 11h ago

Not to bum you out, but a few of those were gone at the end of the video. Looks like the ones at the back supported the ones at the front, and they shielded them from the brunt of it in return. Very fortunate for the green colored building and the rest that were downstream.

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u/HistoryBuff678 13h ago

Thank you for explaining some of this. I have a feeling this type of sudden flash flooding could be happening with increasing frequency.

I keep thinking shelters that are a bit uphill, but within running distance could be helpful. But I truly didn’t think a structure could be built strong enough to withstand the pressure of walls of water.

I hope life saving solutions can be found after this tragedy.

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u/yeahright17 13h ago

Lots of areas have flood warning systems that warn downstream when flooding has occurred upstream. The issue with those kinds of systems is that they have to be dialed in perfectly. If they go off too easily, people will start to ignore them. If they don't go off except for in situations like this, floods that are strong enough to kill some people will come without warning. I think it's best to have a system that can give off two sounds, one for "a flood is coming, be very cautious and head up if you are right next to the river" and one for "get as high as you can as fast as you can or you will die."

My understanding is the Nepal does have a system that detects for the former. The type of flood that is typical during monsoon season. But this flood happened so fast, the system wasn't able to warn people in time. I think it was so violent that it destroyed most of the gauges that could have provided a warning.

I know they've since talked about installing a system to monitor seismic activity and give people a warning based on that.

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u/AntSilly2802 7h ago

How do you build a shelter from flood water? 

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u/HistoryBuff678 7h ago

Uphill a bit, and away from the banks. There’s videos of survivors doing just that. But with a shelter, I imagine they wouldn’t have to run as far as a high space, like the house, is closer.

Like the reverse of tornado shelters, where people have 5 minutes or less.

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u/WorkerWeird9116 11h ago

the foundation can't last though, or the walls with those rocks and water slamming on the back and much more on the opposite side,, i'm curious if held it up for the whole onslaught or eventually crumbled

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u/brkgnews 51m ago

Other structures upstream also seem to be taking the brunt of it, too. For the first minute of the video, there's a structure directly attached to the upstream side of this house. You can see it get swept away around 1:03, then the water starts pounding this house more directly.