Race Against Time: Hundreds of Workers Still Trapped in Nepal Flood Tunnel
Hope and anxiety grip the families of around 600 workers believed to still be trapped inside a network of muddy tunnels along the Trishuli River in Nepal. Rescue teams are blasting hillsides with explosives and pumping air into the Trishuli-3A hydroelectric project area in a bid to save lives before time runs out.
“I hope we can find him. I hope he can come home,” said Anushila Bhandari, wife of Aurus Bhandari, 33, an engineer missing at the project site.
Nepal’s disaster management authority has recorded 939 deaths from the flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border. The number of missing has been revised to 3,925 people, 592 of whom are foreign nationals. Around one in seven of the missing are believed to be workers at the hydroelectric power plant.
Search efforts are being led by an international team involving Nepalese and Chinese military personnel, assisted by experts from India, Korea and Australia. Nepal’s Prime Minister, Balendra Shah, said 279 people have so far been evacuated from the project area, and a total of 11,379 residents have been rescued from various affected regions.
Hope that the workers are still alive is being kept by the victims’ families. Sita Pandey, whose husband was working at the hydroelectric plant when the flood struck, places her trust in the facilities inside the tunnel.
“I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside,” she told the Kantipur daily.
However, the slow response on the ground has sparked concern. Families believe the air pumping should have been carried out earlier. A search and rescue team entered one of the hydroelectric tunnels on Monday but was forced to retreat after finding no one inside.
“The longer time passes, the more our hope dies. This operation must move much faster because every second means everything to us,” said Jiban Khadka, a relative of one of the trapped workers.
The devastated terrain is the main obstacle. Australian engineer Arnold Dix, who is assisting the underground search operation remotely, described the site as resembling the surface of the moon because the original landscape has been swept away by the flood.
“There are boulders bigger than houses. I have never seen anything like it in my life. This is a truly extraordinary operation,” said the former chairman of the International Tunnelling Association.
Nevertheless, Dix believes the underground structures may have provided protection from the floodwaters sweeping across the surface.
Meanwhile, the disaster’s impact extends to downstream areas. In Chitwan District, medical teams and volunteers are racing against time to bury nearly 300 bodies carried by the river currents. Given limited cold storage facilities, local authorities have been forced to carry out temporary burials after taking DNA samples for later identification by family members.
The disaster has also struck the Tibet region. Chinese state media reported 16 people dead and 546 missing. The Chinese and Nepalese governments are now tightening online information monitoring and imposing sanctions on those spreading speculation or information deemed inaccurate regarding the casualty figures.