2008 Koshi embankment breach

News of an impending disaster spread through Kusaha village, in Nepal's Sunsari District five kilometres from the Indian border on the east bank of the Koshi, on the morning of 18 August, and the eastern embankment breached upstream of the border. No one died in Kusaha itself, but the river picked up a channel it had abandoned more than 200 years earlier and drowned towns and villages across seven districts of north Bihar, affecting more than three million people. Two days before the breach, the Indian chief engineer for the Koshi Project, which administers the embankments on both sides of the border, had denied there was any danger.

Date
2008-08-18
Deaths (Wikipedia list, low end where it gives a range)
250
What the pin marks
The Koshi Barrage, as the cited page positions it; the embankment breached upstream of it at Kusaha.
Where the position is published
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koshi_Barrage

Category: Disasters & Incidents

Tags: nepal, bihar, embankment, river avulsion

Coordinates: 26.52639, 86.92694

Part of Dam failures that killed 100 or more people since 1900

More in Dam failures that killed 100 or more people since 1900

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