Nepal rescuers blast hillside in search of hydropower workers as families wait anxiously
Rescuers have resorted to explosives as they struggle to reach trapped workers, as the flooding death toll reaches 939.
Nepalese rescue teams are employing explosives to breach hillsides in their urgent search for hydropower workers, as anxious families await news of their loved ones.
Over 600 workers are believed to be trapped within an extensive network of mud-filled tunnels along Nepal's Trishuli River. Rescuers, including army personnel, continued their efforts on Monday, using explosives to blast into the hillside and then pumping air into the Trishuli-3A site, concerned that the critical window for finding survivors is rapidly closing.
"I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home," Anushila Bhandari, whose 33-year-old engineer husband, Aurus Bhandari, is missing from a project site, shared with BBC Nepali.
This intensified rescue operation comes as the death toll from the flood disaster on the Nepal-Tibet border has reached 939, according to Nepal's disaster management authority. The agency has also revised its estimate for the number of missing individuals to 3,925, which includes 592 foreign nationals. Approximately one in seven of those missing are thought to be workers at hydropower plants. Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah reported on Monday that 279 people have been rescued from these sites.
An international team, comprising Chinese and Nepalese military personnel, is leading the rescue efforts, with experts from India, Korea, and Australia also contributing. Each hydropower plant employs hundreds of workers, including local and migrant laborers, as well as highly skilled engineers.
"I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside," Sita Pandey, whose husband was working at a plant when the floods struck, told the Nepalese daily Kantipur.
Nepal's economy heavily relies on hydropower, and the nation has invested years in developing projects along its mountainous river systems. Authorities have confirmed that at least 11 projects, either completed or under construction, sustained damage in the floods.
While rescuers began pumping air into a tunnel over the weekend, families of those trapped believe this action should have been taken sooner. Earlier on Monday, a team managed to enter a tunnel leading to one hydropower plant but withdrew after finding no one inside.
"The longer it takes, the more our hope dies. This operation must move much faster because every second is meaningful to us," Jiban Khadka, whose relative is also trapped inside a plant, told Kantipur, describing the operation as "frustratingly slow."
Nepalese leader Shah stated that rescue operations have been "intensified," noting that 11,379 people have been rescued to date.
Priya Kharel is another family member anxiously awaiting news; her brother Milan was working as an engineer at the Upper Trishuli-1 plant when the floods hit. "Those who returned from the hydropower site said there were people inside the tunnel," she told BBC News Nepali. "So there is hope that if the army reaches them quickly, they can be saved."
Australian geologist Arnold Dix, who has been assisting Nepalese authorities remotely with the underground search operations, described the ability to even locate a tunnel "under the sea of mud and rock" as a "miracle." In the few tunnels they have managed to penetrate, rescuers are now attempting to reach the turbine rooms, which will require further digging "with hands and shovels," Dix informed ABC News.
"We can't get any big machinery in there because all the roads are gone," he explained. "We also don't know if the turbines have been blown up at all... This is well outside anything we've learnt in our textbooks."
Meanwhile, in Chitwan, a district far downstream from the initial flood impact, makeshift burials are being conducted as the Himalayan nation's river systems have carried nearly 300 dead bodies to its banks. The air is thick with the smell of decay, as men in white Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including masks, transport unidentified corpses into trucks.
Over the weekend, a significant portion of the forest outside the city was excavated. Medical staff and volunteers are working to extract DNA from the unidentified remains. Ganesh Aryaal, the chief district officer, told BBC Nepali that relatives will still be able to retrieve the remains of their loved ones once identified through DNA testing. "We don't have enough freezers here... We had to choose this last alternative of temporary burial system. We are really overwhelmed," he said.
In Tibet, the official death toll stands at 16, with 546 reported missing, according to Chinese state media. Footage of the floods has been heavily censored in China. Chinese authorities have imposed "administrative penalties"—which can range from warnings and fines to short detentions—on individuals speculating online that the casualty numbers are significantly higher than reported. In Nepal, authorities have also ordered the removal of online content deemed to be misinformation about the floods.