Imdad Ali is busy clearing the walkway to his house from fresh snow as his village picked up 3 to 4 inches of fluff the previous night.

There is a strange calm in Hasanabad, a village in Hunza vally. The people in the valley are trying to go about their normal lives but are startled with every crackling sound they hear. They have been nursing a fear for the past 10 months -- a fear that has paralysed their day-to-day activities. It is as if they have forgotten how to smile.

Imdad Ali forces a smile when greeted but deep inside his heart he knows the inevitable -- a surging glacier is just five kilometres away from their homes.

The Shishper glacier, 600 feet in length and 1300 metres wide, located west of Hasanabad, has been acting abnormally since May last year when it started surging towards the valley at a speed of seven metres per day from its place of origin. The unusual surge has formed a huge supra-glacial debris on the mountain when the surging glacier blocked the water flow from a stream originating from Mochowar Glacier, which normally falls into Hunza River at Hasanabad.

Given the current scenario, the village in the valley is at risk of getting washed away in case the 1600 metres blockade of ice gives way to the huge mass of water on top of the mountain.

As fear looms large in the mind and lives of the people of Hasanabad, they have started to spend a great deal of their time, energy and thought on the foreseeable. They have been advised to vacate their houses and move to safer altitudes with whatever belongings they could carry as soon as they hear a siren from a nearby Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) camp.

This recent episode has once again brought the region of Gilgit-Baltistan and its long history of outburst floods to the fore. The Karakoram Glacier basins have countless small and many larger lakes with dams formed of ice, moraines or a combination of the two. Smaller glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) seem to occur somewhere every year within the region but the rarer, large lakes outbursts threaten with much greater damage.

To better understand the gravity of the situation an understanding of lake outburst in the region is to be taken into account. Most lakes in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan have ice dams of a single type, where a substantial tributary glacier advances across and impounds a main river valley, just like the Shishper glacier surge. These GLOF hazards differ from smaller ones in the Karakoram and those receiving attention recently in the rest of the region -- specifically they require glacier advances. In the past decade or so, some of the glaciers associated with large ice dams have advanced and caused, or threatened to cause, GLOFs.

The Karakoram is one of the relatively few mountain regions with high numbers of surge-type glaciers, subject to sudden, short-lived accelerations that transfer large volumes of ice down glacier. Some 55 surges have been identified since the 1860s involving 46 glaciers. Various studies suggest many more are surge type, perhaps one-third of Karakoram valley glaciers. Existing observations are reviewed and how they compare with those in other, better-known regions.

The glaciers involved are predominantly or wholly avalanche-fed; occur in the highest, steepest parts of the Karakoram; and have large elevation spans. In recent decades, many surge-type tributaries have also been identified; 20 out of 33 events since the 1960s and nearly half (22) of all surges are documented.

In the past, most would have been missed, their numbers underestimated. Surges have huge impacts, affecting glacier morphology, surface features, hydrology, erosion and deposition. They are explained by instabilities at the bed of the glacier. Timing and recurrence intervals are peculiar to each case and have little or no relation to climate change or fluctuations in adjacent glaciers. They create huge mass balance anomalies and compromise the use of glacier advances or retreats as climatic signals. They pose a range of hazards for nearby communities.

"We are facing three possible scenarios in case the glacier dam breaks open," says Farid Ahmad, Director General Gilgit Baltistan Disaster Management Authority. "The first is that in March, when the melting season starts, the mass of water can fizzle out from the lake in the form of a short or medium flood without impacting any human settlement. The second scenario is a medium flash flood when the lake bursts open resulting in damaging public-private installations and around 20 houses. Worst case scenario, and what we have prepared for is the whole mass of water descending, destroying all installations, sweeping away 70 houses and inundating a section of the Karokoram Highway near Hasanabad."

Though Ahmad is confident that the GBDMA is well-prepared in case of an emergency, and there is no doubting their capability of dealing with any situation, monetary constraints within the organisation will hamper their efficiency. With the region having experienced heavy snowfall in winters, the cash strapped GBDMA is already stretched throughout the region by helping communities affected by avalanches. With no funds to purchase tents in case of an emergency, the GBDMA is looking up to Islamabad for the much needed funds it requires.

In recent years, increasingly erratic and unpredictable weather patterns in the region and increased climate variability have led to severe and frequent GLOF related disasters, which has adversely impacted lives, livelihoods, agricultural productivity, and hydropower production.

The region is in dire need of early warning systems (EWS) and timely information in order to minimise adverse impacts of natural calamities. Early warning coupled with information identifying at-risk areas will also improve the efficiency of organisations like the GBDMA. All this can be, however, achieved only with a wider partnership in place and a greater devolution of disaster management roles and responsibilities at grassroots level.

Unfortunately, a $37 million GLOF-II project which was to begin last year has hit a brick wall due to inter-departmental lethargy and with it funding for 28 community-based disaster EWS have ceased. The idea behind the GLOF-II project is for EWS to reach individuals and households through formal and informal institutional mechanisms. In the given conditions, it is necessary for the community to understand the implications of the warnings and to be trained to take appropriate action, identify safe evacuation routes, and establish safe zones in advance.

Till that time, the 170 households at Hasanabad and its residents can only wish for the cold weather to persist. Every ray of sun in the valley brings fear in the hearts, for they know once the glacier melts all hell will break loose.