Nearly 3,000 missing in Nepal, China floods
‘All the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing left.’
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‘All the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing left.’
NUWAKOT, Nepal (AFP) — Rescuers in Nepal and China were still battling 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 soared close to 3,000 Saturday, latest figures from both countries showed, with 633 bodies recovered — and reports of some dead possibly swept downstream as far away as India.
In an area home to vast energy infrastructure projects, Nepal’s disaster authority added 933 hydropower workers to a missing persons list already including trekkers and pilgrims to Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash.
Those that made it out say they have lost everything and now face an agonizing wait to discover the fate of missing loved ones, and the prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing.
“All the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing left,” survivor Buddhi Ram Dangol told Agence France-Presse.
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.
Supplies running out
The trauma of Wednesday’s catastrophe 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.
Emergency teams had been racing to retrieve survivors from affected zones, where the widespread devastation meant food and water supplies were running out.
Compounding the search for the missing have been fears of further flooding in affected areas.
The deluge of ice and mud caused huge lakes to form, and one of these formations has become a direct threat to emergency workers scouring the region for survivors.
Nepali police urged all rescuers to “immediately move to a safe location,” saying they had received information that “a water dam has burst again on the Tibetan side.”
In Tibet, where Chinese authorities are the only source of information, Beijing suspended its rescue operation at the hardest-hit area of Gyirong over the risk of renewed flooding, before saying the threat had eased.
State news agency Xinhua reported early Saturday morning that two villagers had been rescued in the area.
On the Nepali side of the border, the military located people trapped in the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A hydropower project, where they were working to find a way in to extract the survivors.
Nepali army rescue teams were using drilling equipment on Saturday seeking to rescue more than 100 people trapped inside.
Nepal’s prime minister’s office said in a statement that 82 personnel, including both army and police, were working to “excavate the tunnel entrance.”
On Thursday, the office said that the army had already rescued 350 people from the site under “extremely risky” conditions, but that more than 100 remained trapped.
Some 350 workers and residents have been brought to safety from the site, he added, but efforts were ongoing to rescue more than a hundred trapped in the same area.
