KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal’s rescue operation entered a critical phase Monday as teams searched for hundreds of people believed to be trapped inside hydropower tunnels after a catastrophic flood and debris disaster along the Nepal-China border killed at least 903 people and left about 4,200 others unaccounted for.
Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that more than 10,000 people had been rescued and that around 590 foreign nationals from 39 countries remained missing. The government said specialist tunnel-rescue teams from India and China were assisting Nepali authorities, while South Korean personnel had also been mobilised.
The scale of the emergency has made the search for people trapped underground one of the most urgent elements of the response.
A disaster across the Himalayas
The disaster began last week after a collapse in the Himalayan region unleashed an enormous flow of water, ice, rock and mud across communities in Nepal and into China’s Tibet region.
The resulting floods damaged roads, bridges and hydropower infrastructure while cutting off parts of the affected area. In some locations, debris buried or blocked tunnels belonging to hydropower projects, leaving workers with little or no accessible route to the surface.
Reuters reported Monday that rescue teams were concentrating on tunnels at hydropower facilities in the affected districts, with workers using excavators and other heavy equipment to remove the material blocking access. Chinese and Indian specialists have joined the operation because of the technical difficulty involved in reaching people underground.
The Nepalese government said it has requested and received specialised assistance including tunnel-rescue equipment, DNA testing kits, refrigeration equipment and forensic expertise.
The numbers are still moving
The humanitarian picture remains fluid.
Nepal’s Foreign Ministry reported 903 recovered bodies and approximately 4,200 people still unaccounted for as of Monday afternoon. The ministry cautioned that figures would continue to be updated as government agencies verify information from affected areas.
The number of missing people includes both Nepali citizens and foreign nationals caught in the disaster zone.
That international dimension has complicated the response. Nepal’s government said diplomatic missions are helping families establish contact with authorities and supporting identification and repatriation procedures for foreign victims.
Across the border in Tibet, Chinese authorities have also reported deaths and hundreds of people missing.
The disaster has therefore become a cross-border emergency involving two countries and a large international group of victims and missing persons.
Why the hydropower tunnels matter
The focus on hydropower workers is not incidental.
Nepal has invested heavily in hydropower as part of its energy development strategy, taking advantage of the country’s mountainous terrain and extensive river systems. The same geography that creates enormous potential for electricity generation, however, can expose infrastructure and workers to floods, landslides and other natural hazards.
The recent disaster demonstrated that vulnerability in extreme terms.
Some hydropower facilities were struck by water and debris with enough force to block access routes and isolate workers underground. Reuters reported that authorities were attempting to clear tunnels while dealing with unstable terrain and the continuing possibility of further flooding.
The rescue effort is consequently not simply a matter of sending teams underground.
Engineers must first determine whether blocked passages can safely be entered, remove enormous quantities of debris and manage the possibility that additional water or unstable material could threaten both trapped workers and rescuers.
A humanitarian operation as well as a rescue
The immediate priority remains finding survivors, but the disaster has already created a second crisis involving the identification and burial of victims.
Nepal’s Foreign Ministry said many bodies were temporarily buried because of decomposition and the difficult conditions in which they were recovered. DNA samples have been collected to allow families to identify victims and, where necessary, bodies can later be exhumed for religious and other funeral rites.
That process reflects the scale of the disaster.
Authorities are dealing simultaneously with rescue operations, missing-person investigations, emergency relief, forensic identification and the restoration of damaged infrastructure.
More than 10,000 people have already been rescued, according to the government, while international assistance has arrived from countries including India, China, Japan, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea. International organisations including the United Nations, World Health Organization, World Food Programme and UNICEF are also supporting the response.
The wider warning
The disaster is also likely to intensify discussion about the vulnerability of Himalayan communities and infrastructure to extreme weather and glacial hazards.
The immediate cause and sequence of the disaster must be established through scientific assessment rather than assumption. But the destruction has highlighted the risks faced by communities and infrastructure operating in a region where glaciers, steep terrain, rivers and rapidly changing environmental conditions intersect.
For Nepal, the consequences will extend well beyond the rescue operation.
The government has already said the damage to homes, roads, bridges and hydropower facilities is extensive and that a detailed post-disaster assessment will be required to determine the scale of reconstruction.
That reconstruction will likely take years.
For now, however, the priority remains much more immediate.
Rescue teams are still working through tonnes of debris in an effort to reach people who may be alive inside the tunnels.
Every hour matters.
And as authorities continue to revise the numbers of dead and missing, Nepal is confronting a disaster whose full human and economic cost has yet to be measured.
