The death toll from devastating glacial floods in the Himalayas (Nepal) has surpassed 1,000, as Chinese and Nepali rescue teams continue searching for survivors, including dozens of hydropower workers feared trapped inside tunnels. Nearly 4,500 people remain missing after a massive surge of freezing water, rocks and debris triggered by……
The death toll from devastating glacial floods in the Himalayas (Nepal) has surpassed 1,000, as Chinese and Nepali rescue teams continue searching for survivors, including dozens of hydropower workers feared trapped inside tunnels.
Nearly 4,500 people remain missing after a massive surge of freezing water, rocks and debris triggered by a high-altitude glacial collapse swept downstream on Wednesday.
The flood destroyed entire settlements and left a trail of devastation across parts of Nepal.
Nepali rescue workers are racing against time to reach about 100 hydropower workers believed to be trapped inside several tunnels buried under debris.
Rescue teams have been digging, drilling and blasting through the rubble despite dangerous and difficult conditions.
However, efforts to reach those trapped have so far yielded only bodies, with the tunnels heavily blocked by sludge and debris.
....: Nepal Floods: Death Toll Hits 939 As Nearly 4,500 Remain Missing
“We are focused on search and rescue efforts at the tunnels, our work is continuing,” Nepal Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet told AFP on Tuesday.
“Our soldiers are also deployed to collect bodies and prevent the spread of disease.”
With mortuaries overflowing in Nepal, authorities have begun burying hundreds of unidentified bodies after DNA sampling. At least 17 bodies have also been pulled from rivers far downstream in India.
Police, using a drone to search for survivors, said on Tuesday that they had located 24 corpses in a single house in Nuwakot district.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah has called the catastrophe “unimaginable and heartbreaking”.
‘Find their bodies’
In the capital Kathmandu, crowds lined up to search for their missing relatives, posting photographs on a long wall outside a hospital in the fading hope of finding them alive.
Debu Sapkota, a 58-year-old driver, came to post photos of his 83-year-old mother-in-law and her granddaughter who went missing in the town of Trishuli Bazaar after being swept away by last week’s surge.
A warning alert sounded, but the elderly woman was “too old to run”, he said.
“Her granddaughter was helping her escape, but both were swept away.”
Sapkota said he no longer has “any hope that they survived”, after witnesses saw them being carried away by the torrent.
“I am here hoping to find their bodies,” he said, holding up photos of the two missing women dressed in traditional clothes.
In Chitwan district, mourning relatives cremated some of the dead.
Soldiers were seen unloading bodies of victims from helicopters in Nepal’s Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts.
Aid needs are enormous. Entire communities have been swept away, leaving families homeless and using makeshift shelters as heavy rain lashes down.
Roads and dozens of bridges have been smashed, and power plants destroyed.
“There are too many challenges,” said police officer E. Hawadi in badly affected Nuwakot district.
Climate change
In Nuwakot, AFP photographers on Tuesday saw people scouring through mud into the rubble of their homes for usable items, some clearing away dirt and stringing up plastic sheeting for shelter in the ruins.
Foreigners missing among the list include 583 in Nepal and 261 in China, coming from more than 30 nations.
They include tourists who had come for trekking in the Himalayas, as well as Hindu pilgrims seeking spiritual peace at Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash.
There is growing anger at the scale of destruction to hit Nepal, a largely rural nation of 30 million people. It has contributed little to the emissions driving global warming churned out by wealthy and industrialised nations, but is suffering its consequences.
“It is now time for us to strongly raise with the international community the issue of the disasters we are experiencing as a result of climate change,” Shah, Nepal’s prime minister, said in a statement late Monday.
Scientists say the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range, are melting faster as global temperatures rise.
Nepal’s economy is already under pressure, with limited resources to respond to a disaster of this scale. Kathmandu has warned reconstruction costs could run into the “billions of dollars”.
‘Mourn the victims’
Nepal said 1,003 bodies had been recovered by Tuesday, and listed 3,916 as missing.
China’s state media reports 16 dead, with 546 people missing.
That takes the overall number of dead to 1,019, and missing to 4,462.
In China, Tibet is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists, and Chinese authorities are the only source of official information.
Emergency workers, officials and residents in Tibet held memorial services on Tuesday.
“Rescuers, local officials and residents stood in silence to mourn the victims,” China’s official news agency Xinhua said.
More than 2,000 people are aiding rescue operations, including soldiers, Xinhua added.
It said on Tuesday that teams were “working around the clock to search for survivors, repair roads, set up communication base stations and restore power lines”.
But Tibetan advocacy groups in exile have questioned China’s account of the disaster.
Tencho Gyatso, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, called for China to disclose “complete and verifiable information about the damage and casualties”.
Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Monday that the “release of information has been open, transparent and timely”, and rejected international reports that it was underreporting deaths.
AFP
