Nepal, China flood missing toll nears 3,000 as search continues

Rescuers in Nepal and China were still working Saturday to locate thousands of people missing days after a deadly, tsunami-like wall of water and debris swept through the Himalayan region, engulfing villages.

The number of missing rose to nearly 3,000 on Saturday, according to the latest figures from both countries, with 633 bodies recovered so far. Some of the dead may have been swept downstream as far as India.

In the region, which is home to major hydropower infrastructure, Nepal’s disaster authority added 933 hydropower workers to a missing persons list that already included trekkers and pilgrims traveling to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a site considered sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism.

Survivors described losing everything and now face an uncertain wait to learn the fate of missing relatives and friends.

“All the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing left,” survivor Buddhi Ram Dangol told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Samjhana Thing said she had been waiting three days for news of her missing brother.

“We don’t know anything. Hopefully he is in a safe place,” she said.

‘Enormous’ trauma

The trauma of Wednesday’s disaster has been “enormous,” and as many as 93,000 people may have been affected, the Red Cross said, with the death toll expected to rise further.

Emergency teams have been racing to reach survivors in affected areas, where widespread damage has left food and water supplies running low.

Search efforts have also been complicated by fears of further flooding. The initial deluge of ice and mud formed large lakes, and one has become a direct threat to rescue workers in the region. Nepali police urged all rescuers to move to safe locations immediately, citing reports that a dam had burst again on the Tibetan side of the border.

In Tibet, where Chinese authorities are the only source of information, Beijing suspended rescue operations in the hardest-hit area of Gyirong, near the Nepal border, over the risk of renewed flooding, before later saying the threat had eased. State news agency Xinhua reported early Saturday that two villagers had been rescued there.

‘All swept away’

On the Nepali side of the border, the military located people trapped inside a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydropower project, in the Trishuli valley north of Kathmandu, and was working to reach them.

Two helicopters were dispatched, though locating the tunnel’s entry points has proven difficult, according to army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet.

He said 350 workers and residents had been brought to safety from the site, while efforts continued to rescue more than 100 people still trapped there.

Workers rescued from other dam projects along the Trishuli valley described a disaster that unfolded within moments.

Buddha Tamang told AFP he survived only because he was inside a tunnel at the dam where he worked when the flood struck.

“The senior officers working on the other side, they were all swept away,” said Tamang, who was airlifted to safety on Thursday after being stranded for more than 24 hours.

Nepal reported a death toll of 626 people on Saturday, with 2,426 people, including hundreds of foreign nationals, still out of contact.

Across the border in Tibet, which remains largely inaccessible to foreign journalists, seven people died and 554 remain missing, Xinhua reported early Saturday. Authorities said they had evacuated 555 stranded tourists and 499 Chinese residents from the region.

In India, authorities said they had recovered seven bodies from rivers flowing down from Nepal, believed to be flood victims.

Pilgrimage route

Many of those missing near the border were Hindu pilgrims traveling to Mount Kailash in Tibet.

Sivaranjani Muthunathan was traveling by bus with 56 others toward the Chinese border when the group became stuck in what they initially believed was a traffic jam.

“Then there was fog, smoke, something that seemed to suddenly engulf us,” Muthunathan, 46, told AFP on Friday, describing a phone video she recorded of a torrent surging toward her.

Vehicles around them were swept away or buried under mud.

“One by one, we also climbed out through the driver’s side,” she said, before the group scrambled up a nearby hill.