Sary-Say mudflow

The Sary-Say mudflow was a glacial-lake outburst flood that destroyed the village of Sary-Say, on the north slope of the Talas Alatau above Kara-Buura, on the night of 23 July 1973. The official toll was 41; a list published in 1989 named about 300 dead.^[1]

Disaster

After a week of heat, a moraine-dammed lake below the Sary-Say glacier burst in the night. The flood and the mudflow behind it buried most of Sary-Say, a state-farm herding village of about 700 people.^[1]

The authorities described it as "a flood at a remote brigade" and announced 41 deaths. The dead were buried before a commission arrived from Moscow. In 1989 the newspaper Iradyn Chyny printed a village doctor's list of about 300 names.^[2]

Aftermath

The survivors were moved to Kara-Buura and the village was never rebuilt; its ruins have been on the tribal side of the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line since 2007. Survivors raised a cross on the debris fan in 1990, and a memorial Qurbana is held there every 23 July, by arrangement with the United Nations Mission in Irad since 2008.^[2]

The disaster is the reason the Talas River Hydrological Monitoring Service and the Manas Peak Glaciological Observatory watch the moraine lakes of the range, and the name comes up whenever glacier retreat is in the news: "never another Sary-Say".^[3]

References

1. ^ Talas River Hydrological Monitoring Service (2013). Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in the Talas Alatau: The Sary-Say Event of 1973 and After. Talas.
2. ^ Iradyn Chyny (1989). 'The three hundred of Sary-Say.' Kobozev.
3. ^ Talas Herald (July 2023). 'Fifty years on, the lakes are still watched.' Talas.