Nepal flood death toll surpasses 1,000 as rescuers race to reach trapped workers

Nepal’s death toll from devastating floods and landslides along its border with Tibet has crossed 1,000, while rescue teams continue a desperate search for hundreds of workers believed to be trapped inside mud-filled hydropower tunnels.

More than 3,900 people remain missing, including over 600 workers who were at hydropower projects along the Trishuli River when the disaster struck.

Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah said 279 people had so far been rescued from the affected sites, as an international rescue effort involving Nepalese and Chinese military personnel continued. Experts from India, South Korea and Australia are also assisting the operation.

BBC reports that rescuers have been pumping air into tunnels in an effort to keep possible survivors alive. However, a team that entered one tunnel on Monday was forced to withdraw after finding no workers.

The search has been complicated by enormous quantities of mud, rocks and debris blocking access to the underground facilities. Army personnel have resorted to explosives to blast through sections of the hillside and clear routes to the tunnels.

The situation has left families anxiously waiting for news of relatives trapped underground.

“I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home,” Anushila Bhandari, whose 33-year-old engineer husband, Aurus Bhandari, is missing, told BBC Nepali.

Another relative, Sita Pandey, said she remained hopeful because an oxygen system was believed to be available inside the plant.

“I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside,” she told Nepalese newspaper Kantipur.

Nepal’s hydropower industry has been particularly badly affected. Authorities said at least 11 hydropower projects, either completed or under construction, were damaged by the floods. The facilities employ hundreds of local and migrant workers, including engineers and other skilled personnel.

Australian tunnelling expert Arnold Dix, who has been assisting Nepalese authorities remotely, described the scale of destruction as extraordinary.

“The actual signature of them has gone – everything is just missing. It looks like a lunar landscape,” Dix told BBC Radio 4.

He said rescuers faced huge boulders, some reportedly larger than houses, as they attempted to locate and access the tunnels.

Meanwhile, the scale of the deaths has created another humanitarian challenge. Only 4% of the roughly 900 bodies recovered so far have been identified, according to Nepal’s Ministry of Health.

In Chitwan district, almost 300 bodies carried downstream by the river system have been recovered. With morgue facilities overwhelmed, authorities have resorted to temporarily burying unidentified bodies while medical teams collect DNA samples to facilitate identification.

The disaster has also affected communities on the Tibetan side of the border. Chinese state media reported 16 deaths and 546 people missing, while search teams continued working through thick mud.

Prime Minister Shah said the scale of the disaster underscored the growing risks facing the Himalayan region.

“This incident indicates that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing alongside climate change,” he said.

As rescue operations continue, families of missing workers are pressing authorities to accelerate efforts, with every passing hour reducing the chances of finding survivors.