Residents pull a zipline to cross the Trishuli River in Bidur, Nuwakot, Nepal, on Wednesday (local time). [AP]
Residents pull a zipline to cross the Trishuli River in Bidur, Nuwakot, Nepal, on Wednesday (local time). [AP]

On Thursday (local time), the ninth day of Nepal's catastrophic floods, rescue authorities were pushing to find dozens of missing workers believed trapped inside hydropower plant tunnels.

According to Reuters, rescue teams were focusing their search on tunnels at four hydropower plants where hundreds of workers have gone missing. About 90 employees are believed to be alive inside two of those tunnels.

Amshu Kiran Shahi, a director at the Nepal Electricity Authority, told Reuters that air remaining inside the two tunnels made them the most promising sites for finding survivors. He added that some tunnels have rest and communications facilities inside, and that food and water may still be available there. "I am very confident there are survivors inside the tunnels," he said.

The Trishuli 3A power plant is equipped with oxygen pipes, raising the possibility that air is still flowing inside its tunnel. A Nepali army official told Reuters that all tunnels were being searched. "We will continue search and rescue operations as long as there is hope of finding survivors," the official said. "Even if there are no survivors, we will recover the bodies."

The army said rescuers recovered two bodies from a tunnel at the Langtang Khola hydropower plant on Thursday (local time). The official death toll tracked by Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority climbed to at least 1,259. The death toll on the Chinese side also rose, from 16 to 21, bringing the combined Nepal-China figure to 1,280.

The number of missing also grew — 5,083 in Nepal and 541 in China, for a combined total of 5,624. Nepal's missing count alone jumped by more than 1,000 in a single day, as the restoration of power and communications allowed authorities to compile damage reports from previously cut-off areas, pushing the official casualty figures higher.

Nepal's disaster management authority said the floods have affected 1.6 million people — roughly 5 percent of the country's total population. About 3,700 households, or more than 14,000 people, remain isolated due to washed-out roads and bridges.

An estimated 7,500 homes have been completely swept away or buried in mud. When uninhabitable but still-standing structures are included, roughly 20,000 homes will need to be rebuilt.

The collapse of the healthcare system has left about 4,430 pregnant women in affected areas including Rasuwa and Nuwakot unable to give birth safely, the UN Population Fund warned. UNICEF said at least 22,000 children urgently need access to clean water, sanitation facilities and hygiene supplies.

Prime Minister Balendra Shah said communications services severed by the floods had been about 95 percent restored by Thursday (local time). His cabinet designated Monday — the 13th day after the disaster struck — as a national day of mourning. Under Hindu tradition, the official mourning period ends on the 13th day after a funeral.

Nepali authorities also said they would upgrade and rebuild an early-warning system for landslides and floods along the border with China. Nepal's disaster management authority plans to install cameras, sensors and satellite communications equipment in Timure, a border village in Rasuwa district.

"The terrain is changing after the major disaster, so there is a possibility of additional landslides," an official told Reuters, stressing the urgency of putting a warning system in place quickly.


kate01@heraldcorp.com