Building resilience on the front line of a climate emergency
In Nepal’s Khumbu mountain hazards are changing.
High in the Khumbu region of Nepal, at around 4,730 metres, Tenzing Jangbu Sherpa runs a hotel, café and bakery in Chukung. He has also worked as a climbing guide, and for years he has helped with rescues and evacuations in the surrounding mountains. His family has lived and worked in the area for decades. Here, the mountains shape everyday life.
One of the mountains Tenzing can see from where he lives is Kang Limu. Its Sherpa name means "beautiful mountain", a name tied to the snow that once covered it.
"Right in front of me is a mountain called Kang Limu. In Sherpa, that means 'beautiful mountain'. We call it that because it was covered in snow, a very white mountain. But in the last few years the snow has been melting fast. Now we see black rock on Kang Limu." — Tenzing Jangbu Sherpa
Over the years Tenzing has worked in Chukung, he has watched that landscape change. Glaciers have retreated. Snow has gone from areas that were once white, and dark rock now shows on Kang Limu. On Island Peak, where Tenzing began guiding in 2007, the point where climbers reach permanent snow and ice has moved significantly higher up the mountain.
The changes Tenzing is describing are also changing the demands placed on emergency services in the region. While communities in the Khumbu are living with those changes directly, FIRE AID is working alongside Tenzing and his fellow rescuers, who make up Everest Fire & Rescue, on the practical question of how local response must adapt.
That was the focus of FIRE AID Nepal Project Manager John Aitchison KFSM’s presentation at Resilience360 during The Emergency Services Show in Birmingham on 17 September. Drawing on more than fifteen years of partnership in Nepal, John set out how preparedness in remote mountain communities depends on building capability locally: trained responders, appropriate equipment, reliable communications and systems that are already in place before an emergency occurs.
Why a changing landscape means changing risk
These changes matter far beyond how the mountains look. Tourism, much of it built around the peaks and glaciers that draw visitors from around the world, underpins the local economy. Snow and glacial ice are also an important source of water.
As glaciers melt, the water has to go somewhere. Much of it collects in glacial lakes held back by loose moraine. When those lakes grow, so does the risk of an outburst flood. That new hazard adds to the floods, avalanches and difficult terrain that Khumbu communities already live with.
The Khumbu is not unusual in this. Climate-related disasters are increasing, and many remote communities still face hard terrain, limited infrastructure and stretched emergency response. Together, these pressures can turn an incident that would be manageable elsewhere into a far more serious emergency.
What the evidence shows
Tenzing estimates that around 90 per cent of people in the Khumbu depend in some way on tourism. The landscape that is changing is also the one that sustains them.
Imja is one of the lakes causing concern. Tenzing says it has expanded significantly over the past 15 to 20 years as the surrounding glacier has retreated, and he has watched it grow season by season. Despite a partial drawdown in 2016, he believes further action is needed to reduce the volume of water it holds.
The flash floods and debris flows that impacted populated areas downstream along the Lende Kholā and Trishuli̇̄ Kholā rivers, including the Rasuwāgaḍhi̇̄ border post between China and Nepal in August 2026 gave those concerns new urgency.
For communities living among glaciers and glacial lakes, the danger is not theoretical. Tenzing describes smaller outburst events as part of life in the mountains. He recalls occasions when warnings had to be passed down the valley by personal phone calls, because the formal warning systems were not heard.
“I have never heard an alarm. In 2017, here in Chukung, there was flooding for around 72 hours without stopping. I called everyone down the valley: a small lake has burst, be careful. I called everyone I knew. But nobody ever heard a siren. ”
Building capability that stays
FIRE AID's partnership in Nepal began in 2009. Everest Fire & Rescue (EFR) is the locally led volunteer fire and rescue service for Nepal’s Khumbu/Everest region, officially inaugurated in 2023, with FIRE AID supporting its development through training, equipment and technical expertise.
The aim has always been to strengthen the ability of people already living and working in the region to respond to emergencies, rather than build a system that depends on outside teams arriving after disaster strikes.
John and colleagues began returning to the region to train local responders and provide equipment, including stretchers, oxygen and evacuation kit. Radios supplied through Everest Fire and Rescue have improved local communication. For Tenzing, the consistency mattered. The training has given people in the community practical skills to protect themselves and respond to emergencies. Equipment is now kept locally, rather than improvised or brought in after an incident has already happened.
On 17 September 2026, John took that story to The Emergency Services Show at the NEC Birmingham. Speaking at Resilience360, he presented Everest Fire and Rescue: Building Resilience on the Front Line of a Climate Emergency. The talk looked at how people, equipment and emergency response need to adapt as climate-related risks become more complex and unpredictable.
What we have learned
Equipment does not travel on its own. In FIRE AID's fire service-led partnership model, it moves with training, professional knowledge and long-term relationships between fire and rescue services. Donations are not an end in themselves. The aim is local systems in which skills, equipment and decision-making stay in the community.
"The result is not simply more equipment in Nepal, but more capability in Nepal: people, knowledge and infrastructure that stay."
— John Aitchison KFSM, FIRE AID Nepal project manager
“The result is not simply more equipment in Nepal, but more capability in Nepal: people, knowledge and infrastructure that stay.”
The second lesson is that preparedness has to evolve with the hazard. Climate change is not only creating new risks in the Khumbu. It is changing what a fire and rescue service there needs to be. Climate adaptation and disaster preparedness increasingly have to shape how those services develop.
The third lesson is about how we talk about places like the Khumbu. The landscape Tenzing describes is still extraordinarily beautiful, and its communities still welcome people from around the world. His message is not that visitors should stay away. Tourism remains vital, and he continues to encourage people to come. Building resilience means recognising the changes without defining the region by disaster.
What still needs to change
More people in the community now have training and equipment, but gaps remain. Communications are the most pressing. Mobile coverage can disappear outside settlements, and radios only reach so far. Tenzing continues to argue for satellite communications for responders working deeper in the mountains.
Early warning has to work in practice, not just on paper. A system that people downstream cannot hear leaves communities relying on phone calls and luck.
The hazard itself also needs attention. Tenzing's preferred approach at Imja is practical: lower the water level, strengthen physical protection and make sure warning systems work.
Preparing for the next ten years
The next phase of the partnership focuses on making capability permanent and increasingly locally sustainable. Plans John presented in Birmingham include:
Expanding funding and partnerships
Climate adaptation led by an annual GLOF impact survey
Everest Fire and Rescue training department accredited instructors
Fire Stations and rescue helicopter snatch rescue box fully funded and self sustained.
For Tenzing, for John, for Everest Fire and Rescue and for FIRE AID, the task is the same. It is to keep building the local capability that lets communities protect themselves long before outside help is needed.
