Rescuers continued Tuesday to search for survivors of this past weekend's glacier disaster in India's area of the Himalayas.
More than 36 power plant workers are trapped in a 9-foot high tunnel filled with mud and debris. More than 170 others remained missing Tuesday.
More than 2,000 military and police are involved in the rescue. Uttarakhand police chief Ashok Kumar said 26 bodies had been recovered.
A wall of water was generated when a chunk of a Himalayan glacier snapped off in northern India, Weather.com reported Tuesday.
Some experts now say the disaster is a result of the planet's warming. Researchers and scientists are at the site investigating possible causes.
Melting ice can create lakes in glaciers. Rising temperatures coupled with reduced snowfall can accelerate melting and trapped water can rise to dangerous levels, the experts say.
Other factors like earthquakes, soil erosion and volcanic eruptions have also been known to cause glaciers to crack and fall off, the reports said.
"The Himalayas are a water tower. With increasing global warming, the upper reaches of the Himalayas are warming faster, leading to more rapid melting of the glaciers," Dr. AP Dimri, a professor at the School of Environmental Science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told The Guardian.
The force of the avalanche of fast-moving deluge damaged two hydropower dams where hundreds were working.
"We didn't think we were going to make it," 28-year-old Rajesh Kumar told the Agence France-Presse news agency from his hospital bed.
"Suddenly there was a sound of whistling...there was shouting, people were telling us to come out. We thought it was a fire. We started running but the water gushed in."
"We just kept telling each other - come what may, we must not let go of the rods. Thank god our hands did not lose their grip," Kumar said.
