Qualla: Lake Palcacocha

Lake Palcacocha: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On a farm in the Callejón de Huaylas, Saúl Luciano Lliuya watched the glacier-fed lake above his city grow 34 times larger than it had been in 1970. He knew what lakes like this one could do. On December 13, 1941, a slab of ice fell from the adjacent glacier into Lake Palcacocha, broke through the moraine holding the water back, and sent an avalanche of mud, rock, and ice down the Cojup valley. Fifteen minutes later it reached Huaraz. It killed somewhere between 1,800 and 7,000 people. In 2015, Luciano Lliuya filed suit in a German court against RWE, the coal utility, for its share of responsibility in making the lake above his home grow again. The case was called absurd when filed. In 2017 it made history.

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Lake Palcacocha: 4,566 Meters, Below the Peaks

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Palcacocha - the Quechua name roughly means forked lake - sits in the Cordillera Blanca at 4,566 meters, tucked into the Cojup valley below two giants: Palcaraju at 6,274 meters and Pucaranra at 6,156 meters. The glaciers that cloak these peaks feed the lake. Meltwater fills it, ...

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Lake Palcacocha: Fifteen Minutes to Huaraz

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

December 13, 1941 was an early morning. Most of Huaraz was asleep or just waking. High above the town, without warning, a huge piece of the adjacent glacier - or possibly an avalanche, the chroniclers are not entirely sure - fell into Lake Palcacocha. The impact generated a wave....

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Lake Palcacocha: The Glacier That Kept Retreating

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the disaster, engineers installed drainage structures in 1974 designed to keep the lake level eight meters below the height of the damming moraine - a buffer against a repeat event. It worked, in 1974's terms. But the adjacent glacier kept retreating. Climate-driven melting...

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Lake Palcacocha: NASA, a False Alarm, and Six Drainpipes

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In April 2003, NASA scientists spotted what looked like a crack in the glacier above Palcacocha on Terra satellite images from November 2001. Their warning reached Peru about two weeks after UGRH, Peru's glaciology unit, had completed field mapping at the lake. Panic spread throu...

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Lake Palcacocha: Lliuya v. RWE

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Saúl Luciano Lliuya is a farmer and mountain guide from Huaraz. In 2015, with support from the NGO Germanwatch, he filed a lawsuit against the German energy utility RWE in a German court. His argument: RWE is responsible for roughly 0.47 percent of global anthropogenic emissions ...

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