Nepal floods LIVE: Toll rises to 788; rescuers race against time as Bhotekoshi water rises again

Nepal Army engineers intensified efforts on Sunday to reach people believed trapped inside the Upper Trishuli-3A hydropower project tunnel in flood-hit Nuwakot, using heavy equipment and blasting to widen an opening into the buried structure.

As many as 537 workers and employees remained unaccounted for at nine hydropower projects in the flood-hit Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts. The Trishuli-3A hydropower project tunnel is one of them.

The operation at the Trishuli-3A site is focused on reaching 42 people reported out of contact at the 60 MW project, according to the Independent Power Producers’ Association, Nepal (IPPAN).

The Nepal Electricity Authority has separately estimated that around 42 technical personnel were working on an overhaul of the underground powerhouse when they became trapped inside the tunnel, the OnlineKhabar news portal reported.

According to an update from the Nepal Prime Minister's Office, a joint 90-member rescue team has been deployed at the site, comprising 66 Nepali Army personnel, including a special search and rescue team with trained dogs, 18 Armed Police Force personnel and six Nepal Police personnel.

The team reached the main section of the tunnel, known as the “crown head”, around 2 pm and created a 2-by-3-foot opening, the PMO said. Rescuers descended through the opening using ropes and called out to those inside but received no response, it said.

Rescue efforts were being continued simultaneously with heavy equipment and blasting, while the opening was being widened to facilitate a faster and more effective operation, according to the PMO.

The Nepali Army has also airlifted excavators and bulldozers to Battar in Nuwakot after dismantling the heavy machinery into sections for helicopter transport, according to the Nepal News web portal.

The tunnel mouth was subsequently located about 40 metres upstream from the vertical hole and about eight metres below it, according to the Ratopati news portal. However, rescuers have yet to reach the workers believed to be trapped inside.

The 216 MW Upper Trishuli-1 project in Rasuwa has the largest number of workers still unaccounted for. Around 300 are still believed to be trapped inside the tunnel.

An 11-member Indian technical team comprising doctors, paramedics and tunnel engineers carried out reconnaissance of hydropower tunnels in the flood-affected areas, the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu said.

Indian Ambassador Naveen Srivastava said the Indian experts conducted reconnaissance of tunnels in the Chilime and Langtang power plant areas along with the Nepali Army.

For thousands of people who escaped Nepal’s devastating floods, the emergency has not ended. They are now living in temporary shelters, often without medicines and basic necessities they had before the waters swept through their communities.

According to a government update reported by local media, three relief camps have been established in Rasuwa and 15 in Nuwakot, while temporary accommodation has been arranged in schools and public and community buildings for about 3,500 displaced people.

Nepal Police said about 1,000 displaced people were staying in nine holding centres in Nuwakot on Saturday, according to The Kathmandu Post. Separately, the newspaper reported that about 1,000 people were staying at three displacement camps around Trishuli Hospital—at Bhairung Secondary School, a covered hall and Bethan Academy.

The camps are sheltering people with a range of needs, including pregnant women, new mothers and those requiring medical care, The Kathmandu Post reported. But the shelters are facing shortages of clean drinking water and sanitation, while doctors have warned that crowded conditions could increase the risk of disease.

Water shortage is not confined to the camps. The flood destroyed the canal that supplied drinking water to Trishuli Hospital and surrounding settlements, while another pipeline through Tupche was also washed away, according to The Kathmandu Post.

Hospital officials warned that inadequate sanitation and unsafe water in crowded shelters could increase the risk of disease, the newspaper reported.

The Yellow Monastery in the Swoyambhu-Sanobhryang area, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, is providing temporary shelter to around 500 people. Many of those staying at the monastery have no idea where they will go next, as their homes were completely buried in the flood.

Indian Ambassador to Nepal Naveen Srivastava met the forensic team that has reached Kathmandu to assist their Nepali counterparts in analysing DNA samples.

Four men from the district who were working at power projects in Nepal's Rasuwa district have been untraceable since the devastating flash floods of August 26, their families said on Sunday.

On Saturday, 34-year-old Karan Sharma, a resident of Kushinagar, a foreman working at a hydropower project in Nepal's Rasuwa was reported missing. Two more Kushinagar residents, Arun Kumar Singh and Ravindra Singh, have now been reported untraceable, while the family of another worker, Sunil, said they too are unable to contact him since the disaster.

In another image, 11-year-old Dharm Kumar from Bihar's Motihari is scouring the banks of the Gandak river here in search of his father Nandlal Sahni who ran a scrap shop in Nepal's Rasuwa.

Dharm and his three brothers managed to escape the ravenous floods and crossed into Kushinagar with the help of authorities. However, Nandlal has remained untraceable.

The boy is now searching for his father along the Gandak, which flows through Nepal as the Narayani.

As many as 537 workers and employees remained unaccounted for at nine hydropower projects in Nepal’s flood-hit Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, with rescue teams intensifying efforts to reach people believed trapped inside tunnels blocked by mud and debris.

Rescue operations have been hampered by mud and debris blocking tunnel entrances, damaged infrastructure, difficult terrain and adverse weather, prompting Nepal to seek specialised assistance from India, China and other countries.

According to the Independent Power Producers’ Association in Nepal (IPPAN), 898 workers and employees at nine hydropower projects in the two districts were initially reported out of contact following the August 26 floods.

Of them, 361 have been rescued, leaving 537 still unaccounted for, according to local media reports that cited IPPAN.

The most serious situation is at the 216 MW Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa, with 300 people still believed to be trapped inside the project's tunnel, the media reports said.

At the 60 MW Upper Trishuli-3A Hydropower Project in Nuwakot, rescue efforts have made some progress after the tunnel entrance was buried by mud and debris.

As the death toll crossed 700 and around 2,500 people still missing, at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, families searching for missing relatives have gathered with photographs and other details, checking lists and waiting for news.

For some relatives, the search has extended across several hospitals. Sonia KC of Chautara in Sindhupalchok had spent three days moving between hospitals in Kathmandu looking for her missing brother Shivaram, according to myRepublica.

Three of her sisters and another brother had joined the search, while relatives in Chitwan were asked to look along the Narayani River. “As long as they are not found, there is still hope,” KC told the news portal.

Another relative, Lokmaya Yonjan, was searching for her 35-year-old son-in-law Som Bahadur Tamang, who had gone missing after contacting his family from Syafrubesi. Only one of the six people travelling with him had subsequently made contact, she told the news portal.

The search has also involved families of security personnel. Ratopati news portal reported that Manju Paudel had been searching for her 28-year-old brother, Nepali Army soldier Tapendra Jung Kunwar, who went missing from the Timure barracks in Rasuwagadhi.

She said she had searched at the military hospital, Army headquarters and other hospitals but was repeatedly told that he remained missing. “Either give us hope that he is alive, or show us his body,” Paudel told Ratopati.

At hospitals downstream, meanwhile, the focus has increasingly shifted to identifying the dead.

More Keralites who were stranded following the devastating flood in Nepal have started travelling back to India, NORKA Roots, a Kerala government agency that coordinates overseas affairs and welfare services for non-resident Keralites, said.

Forty five of the 52 people who contacted the NORKA Roots help desk following the floods in Nepal have been confirmed safe, while efforts are on to trace the remaining seven, the agency said.

The agency, in a statement on Sunday, said a 23-member group that had gone on the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, 19 of them Keralites, reached Kathmandu around 12.30 am on Sunday and is preparing to return home.

The group was caught in the floods while staying at Darchula, the base camp for the Kailash pilgrimage, and was subsequently taken to a camp through Kothari, the agency said.

The death toll from the flash floods that devastated Nepal rose to 768 on Sunday (August 30), with more bodies being recovered as rescue teams continued their search for more than 2,500 people still missing.

The bodies have been recovered from eight affected districts, with rescuers racing against time on the fifth day of the disaster to locate those missing and reach people stranded in flood-hit areas.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said the death toll had climbed to 768, while 2,502 people remained missing. So far, 8,730 people have been rescued from the affected areas.

Chitawan has reported the highest number of deaths, with 264 bodies recovered so far. Another 194 were recovered from Nawalparasi East, 100 from Nawalparasi West, 58 from Gorkha, 52 from Nuwakot, 50 from Dhading, 37 from Tanahu and 13 from Rasuwa, officials said.

The disaster struck on August 26 after an ice-rock avalanche triggered by a glacial collapse near the Nepal-Tibet border sent a massive torrent of water, mud and debris downstream. The floods swept through towns and villages across northern and central Nepal, damaged key infrastructure and washed away hydropower stations.