Nepal rescuers reach remote areas in search of thousands missing after devastating floods

Nepali rescuers built temporary bridges to reach remote areas and dug through the ruins of hydropower projects in the Himalayas to rescue close to 300 trapped workers nearly a week after catastrophic floods left a trail of destruction across the country’s towns and valleys.

At least 639 people remain stuck in several devastated hydropower stations that have become the focus of rescue efforts, the country’s disaster management authority said on Tuesday, with the total death toll rising to 987. About 4,000 people are missing.

“Thousands of citizens have lost their homes, families, loved ones and property,” Prime Minister Balendra Shah said in a late-night social media post on Monday. “The government understands the immense pain they are enduring.”

More than 11,000 people have been rescued across the affected region while power and communication lines have been restored in some areas, he said, promising support for those displaced by the glacier collapse that sent a deluge of ice, rock and mud sweeping through the impoverished nation’s border region with China. The calamity poses a massive challenge for Shah’s six-month-old government.

“We did not have the time to grab anything before fleeing,” said a woman survivor from the hard-hit Rasuwa district who walked to Nuwakot with villagers who survived. “What we were wearing are the only clothes we have. They are wet from rain.”

Rescue teams managed to restore road networks to Nuwakot, one of the worst-affected districts, facilitating rescue operations and distribution of relief material, Shah said.

Police official Bipin Regmi said a search team recovered 24 bodies from a house in Betrabati village in Nuwakot district.

In China, rescue teams worked through the night to reopen access to the Nepali border on a steep mountain gorge with unstable cliffs on one side and fast-flowing river channels on the other.

Beijing will send DNA testing experts to disaster-hit areas at the Nepal-China border and a second batch of relief supplies later on Tuesday, its foreign ministry said, adding equipment would include drones and water purification.

South Korea, nine of whose nationals were working at a hydropower project and are missing, said it will send a 44-member emergency relief team to support search and rescue operations in the Rasuwa region.

Nepal last week turned down foreign involvement in general search and rescue but said it needed specialised services and advanced technological support in areas such as life-detecting machines, large refrigerators and Bailey bridges.

Giant neighbours India and China have led the foreign assistance, and the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, EU countries and the United Arab Emirates have also contributed.

“Some of the support has arrived,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Lok Bahadur Chhetri.

Aid worth more than $42m (R678.7m) has poured into the country after the disaster, Shah said, and the government expected the contributions to increase.