Rescuers in Nepal and China were racing against time yesterday to locate thousands of people missing days after a deadly, tsunami-like wall of water and debris swept through the Himalayan region, engulfing entire villages.
Figures from both countries put the number of missing close to 3,000, with 682 bodies recovered. Reports said some of the dead may have been swept downstream as far as India.
Nepal reported a death toll of 675 yesterday, with 2,426 people, including hundreds of foreigners, still out of contact. Across the border in Tibet, seven people died and 554 remained missing, Xinhua state news agency said. Authorities said they had evacuated 555 stranded tourists and 499 Chinese residents from Tibet.
In India, officials said they had recovered seven bodies from rivers flowing from Nepal, believed to be flood victims.
Rescue worker Kawan Koirala, from the Nepal Scout Disaster Response Team, said rescuers were struggling to work because of thick mud.
“People want their family member’s body back, either dead or alive, but we cannot find them... you can see the mud,” he told AFP, exhausted after an 18-hour shift.
The US Geological Survey said the disaster on the Tibet-Nepal border on Wednesday was caused by a glacial collapse that created a torrent of debris downstream. While the exact cause remains unclear, climate change is causing glaciers to melt worldwide, increasing the risks of such disasters.
Search and rescue operations were temporarily halted yesterday because of rain and fog but resumed later in the afternoon, a police officer in hard-hit Rasuwa district told Reuters.
Authorities had also suspended rescue work on Friday when a lake formed across the Nepal-China border after the flood began overflowing into Nepal’s Lhende Khola and Trishuli rivers.
By yesterday, the risk had eased and parts of the lakebed were visible, Chinese authorities and state broadcaster CCTV said. Satellite images suggested the water was slowly draining, and the lake was gradually shrinking.
The lake is one of two upstream of the floodzone being monitored by Nepal. Flood risks will persist until both have fully drained, an official warned.
On the Nepali side, soldiers were desperately trying to drill through to 100 people trapped in tunnels at multiple hydropower projects. The prime minister’s office said teams had begun “clearing mud and debris” to open the entrances. A specialised Indian tunnel rescue unit had arrived to help, while a Chinese team was on its way.
Nepal’s expert mountain rescue teams, accustomed to aiding climbers on the world’s highest peaks, including Everest, are also joining the search.
“We do similar work on the mountains, with rescue operations for people trapped in risky places so I believe our skills will be useful,” Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, told AFP.
In an area home to vast energy infrastructure projects, Nepal’s disaster authority listed 933 hydropower workers among the missing, along with 517 foreigners, including trekkers and Hindu pilgrims to Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash.
Survivors face an agonising wait to learn the fate of missing relatives and the prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing.
At Bidur’s army base, a key rescue hub, desperate families yesterday scanned long lists of rescued people pasted on a wall, nearly four days after the disaster.
“I have come here looking for my son,” said Kalka Sharda, searching for his 18-year-old son Vinod, a hydropower plant labourer. “He was a labourer at the hydropower plant, but I can’t find his name, and the authorities are not saying anything.”
While many had resigned themselves to the possibility that their loved ones were dead, some still clung to hope.
Dil Tamang’s father, a farmer, crossed the China border on Wednesday morning to go to the market but has not returned.
“If I could just talk once to him...,” Tamang said, his voice trailing off.
The trauma of Wednesday’s catastrophe has been “enormous”, and as many as 93,000 people may have been affected, the Red Cross said, with the death toll expected to rise.
Nepal’s Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle told Reuters the government’s initial estimate was that rebuilding would cost between $4 billion and $5 billion.
“This is just an estimate. Loss and damage is being assessed,” he said.
Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said Nepal did not need help with search and rescue but required specialist assistance to rescue people trapped in tunnels, restore transport and communication lines where bridges had been destroyed, identify bodies, conduct DNA testing and store bodies for longer periods.
“We have already made requests for such specialised services and technical assistance in areas where we don’t have enough expertise and technical know-how,” he told Reuters late on Friday.
