[Chapter-delegates] Rasuwa flood in Nepal: connectivity as lifeline, and a request for your chapter's experience

[Umut Pajaro Velasquez]

Hello Ananda

Nice to talk to you again my friend, despite the circumstances, but 
friends also are in those moments. I would like to share with you that 
in Colombia, we implemented a system with the help of one of working 
groups, an early emergency alert system for floods in a region so 
similar to the one in Nepal, so talking with my working group, we will 
be glad to share with you our experience.  You can email-me at 
presidencia at isoc.co, and I will be the bridge and the translator in this 
cooperation.

All the best,

Umut Pajaro Velasquez

Internet Society Colombia Chapter - President

El 26/08/26 a las 13:41, Ananda Gautam via Chapter-delegates escribió:
> Dear Chapter Leaders,
>
> Writing from the Internet Society Nepal Chapter,
>
> Earlier today, 26 August 2026, a flash flood on the Bhote Koshi tore 
> through Timure and Syabrubesi in Rasuwa district on Nepal's northern 
> border. Hydropower plants, market areas, road links and the Timure 
> helipad have been destroyed or badly damaged, and districts downstream 
> along the Trishuli are on alert. The cause is not yet confirmed. The 
> human toll is still being established, so I will not circulate figures 
> that are changing by the hour. Search and rescue is ongoing as I write.
>
> Our chapter has issued a public statement, attached. In short: 
> condolences and recognition of the responders; appreciation for the 
> free communication services announced by the Ministry of Communication 
> and Information Technology and by the operators; and an argument that 
> telecommunications and Internet infrastructure are themselves 
> emergency infrastructure, not a convenience that can be restored after 
> the roads and the power. When fibre, backhaul, electricity and roads 
> fail at the same moment, coordination of the response fails with them.
>
> I want to be honest about why I am writing to this list rather than 
> simply circulating a statement.
>
> We do not have a worked-out disaster response capability, and I 
> suspect that is true of a good number of chapters. When 26 platforms 
> were blocked here in September 2025 and national traffic dropped by 
> around half, we responded with advocacy, because advocacy is what we 
> are built for. A flood is a different problem. It asks for 
> preparedness work done years earlier, relationships with the national 
> disaster authority and the regulator that exist before the emergency 
> rather than after it, and a technical position on backup power, route 
> redundancy and alternative connectivity that someone has already 
> written down. We are starting most of that from scratch, in the middle 
> of it.
>
> So this is a request, not an announcement. If your chapter has been 
> through a cyclone, an earthquake, a wildfire, a flood, a 
> conflict-driven outage or a shutdown, I would like to hear:
>
>  1. What did your chapter actually do, concretely, and at what point
>     in the timeline did you do it?
>  2. Who did you work with, and did that relationship exist before the
>     crisis or did you build it during?
>  3. What did you try that did not work, or could not be attempted at
>     all, and what was the binding constraint: mandate, funding,
>     access, or standing with the government?
>  4. What has held up technically in your context: community networks,
>     emergency roaming, satellite backhaul, backup power, offline
>     content caches, something else?
>  5. Is there a common set of tasks chapters could put to regulators
>     and operators, on restoration priority, emergency roaming, free
>     calling, and public transparency about outages?
>
>
> If there is enough response, I am happy to do the collation work and 
> bring back a synthesis to this list: what chapters have done, what 
> worked, and where the recurring gaps are. Not a framework imposed from 
> Kathmandu, just an organised record of experience that a chapter 
> facing its first disaster could actually read.
>
> Two threads this would connect to rather than duplicate. The Internet 
> Society Foundation has been funding Internet resiliency in disaster 
> response for several years, and chapters that have held those grants 
> will know far more than we do.
>
> Please reply on the list so others can see the answers.
>
> Best Regards,
> Ananda Gautam
> Co-Founder,
> Open Internet Nepal -  Internet Society Nepal Chapter
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> As a Chapter Leader, you are automatically added to the Internet Society’s Chapter Leaders Community Group and the Chapter Delegates e-list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society Chapter Portal (AMS):https://community.internetsociety.org.
> The Internet Society has a legitimate interest to communicate with its chapter leaders, you will therefore remain subscribed for the duration of your term and will be unsubscribed automatically when your term ends.
> Please note that the archive of this list is publicly accessible and may be viewed by anyone. By submitting information to this list and contributing to the communications, you acknowledge that the contents will be publicly visible.
> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct:https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
> -
> Unsubscribe:https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Chapter-delegates
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/attachments/20260829/436f8f97/attachment.htm>