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Emergency teams in Nepal race against time to rescue nearly 300 workers trapped in hydropower tunnels after a glacial collapse triggered devastating floods across the border region with China.
Rescuers in Nepal have been digging through the ruins of hydropower projects in the Himalayas to save close to 300 trapped workers, nearly a week after devastating floods caused widespread destruction across the country’s towns and valleys.
The disaster was triggered by a glacier collapse that sent a massive deluge of ice, rock, and mud sweeping through Nepal’s border region with China. Nepal’s disaster agency reported 987 fatalities in the affected areas, with 3,916 people still missing, including 583 foreigners. Emergency crews have been deploying helicopters and other aircraft to reach stranded communities in locations where roads and bridges were completely destroyed by flooding and landslides.
Nepali rescuers constructed temporary bridges to access remote areas cut off by the catastrophe. In a late social media post on Monday, Prime Minister Balendra Shah stated that 279 workers had been rescued from hydropower projects so far, while authorities estimated that close to 1,000 people remained trapped. Pictures and videos shared by rescue teams showed earth-moving equipment digging and shovelling mud and rocks under lights in the dark of the night as workers observed the operation.
Soldiers used torchlight inside a large pit they had created to search for access points into one of the tunnels. The Himalayan region has seen a boom in hydropower development since the turn of the century, with Nepal seeking to harness its mountain water resources to address chronic domestic power shortages and explore prospects for selling electricity to its southern neighbour India.
These projects require tunnels to carry water through steep terrain, allowing developers to exploit the sharp elevation drop between Himalayan rivers and downstream powerhouses to generate electricity. Scientists studying satellite imagery determined that the collapse appeared to involve the failure of bedrock beneath a glacier in the Himalayan region. The resulting surge of water and debris entered rivers flowing through valleys in Tibet and Nepal, causing them to rise rapidly and unpredictably.
Floodwaters swept away homes, buildings, roads, and bridges while carrying enormous amounts of mud and rocks downstream into populated areas. Relatives gathered at a mortuary in Nepal’s Chitwan district, looking at screens listing victims as they searched for information about their missing loved ones. Healthcare workers at Trishuli camp in Nepal’s Nuwakot district rested after recovering the bodies of flood victims, while a woman walked among the ruins of what had once been her neighbourhood.
The catastrophe has highlighted the risks associated with hydropower infrastructure development in seismically active and glacially sensitive mountain regions, raising questions about safety protocols and environmental monitoring in future projects
Nepal Floods Hydropower Rescue Glacier Collapse Himalayan Disaster Missing Workers
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