Search intensifies for 900 missing at hydel units, 1 tunnel head located

Search intensifies for 900 missing at hydel units, 1 tunnel head located 

FULL COVERAGE: P 5, 16 

Deaths Rise To 810, Over 3,000 Missing 

Vishant Agarwala & Kalyan Das 

Nuwakot (Nepal)/Dehradun: Time running out for more than 900 people missing from Nepal’s flood-hit hydropower projects, rescue teams led by Nepalese Army personnel intensified operations to search for survivors, particularly at Upper Trishuli-3A, where they located the tunnel’s crown head and began widening an opening to send rescuers inside with oxygen cylinders. 

While the Independent Power Producers’Association Nepal said 537 workers and staff were unaccounted for across nine projects, Nepal’s disaster management authority, NDRRMA, stated that 933 workers from hydropower projects were untraced. The number of dead rose to 810 Sunday — 794 in Nepal and 16 reported in Tibet — with 3,048 missing across both countries, as search ops entered a fifth day. 

NDRRMA listed 2,502 people missing and Tibet another 546. Nepal said 592 foreign nationals were among those missing, besides 127 Nepalese citizens travelling with foreign groups. MEA said at 5.30pm Sunday that 149 Indian nationals had been rescued in Nepal. Its latest missing-person tally, issued Saturday night, listed 275 Indian nationals missing or uncontactable and another 128 people of Indian origin as uncontactable. India had also not announced a confirmed number of Indian deaths by Sunday evening. 

Efforts to hunt for survivors at the nine hydropower projects picked up pace as weather improved slightly. Road access to Upper Trishuli-3A remained cut off, forcing Nepalese Army to airlift dismantled excavators, bulldozers and other earth-moving machinery to the project area using helicopters. Joint teams operated the machines through the night despite rain and moved closer to the tunnel entry point. Nepalese Army spokesperson Brig Gen Rajaram Basnet told TOI that the team, which included tunnel experts, had located the crown head — the main section — of Trishuli 3A using excavators and hydraulic cutters. “A hole of 2x3ft was dug, which revealed a water surface spanning a diameter of around seven metres and extending to a significant height. An  expert from the army rescue team entered the hole area and assessed the situation while looking for any human life there, but with no luck so far,” Basnet said. Photo: AFP