The families of more than 600 workers believed to be trapped in a vast network of mud‑filled tunnels along Nepal’s Trishuli River are holding on to hope their loved ones can be found alive.
Rescuers continued efforts on Monday, blasting into the hillside with explosives before pumping air into the Trishuli‑3A site, fearing the critical window to reach survivors is closing.
“I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home,” said Anushila Bhandari, whose husband Aurus, a 33‑year‑old engineer, is missing at the project site, speaking to BBC Nepali.
The disaster management authority said the death toll from the flood on the Nepal‑Tibet border has risen to 939. It revised the number of missing to 3,925, including 592 foreign nationals.
Roughly one in seven of those missing are hydropower workers. Prime Minister Balendra Shah said 279 people had been rescued from the sites.
The rescue operation is being led by Chinese and Nepalese military teams, with experts from India, Korea and Australia also involved.
“I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside,” said Sita Pandey, whose husband was working at the plant when the floods struck, in comments to Kantipur daily.
Nepal, heavily reliant on hydropower, has spent years developing projects along its river systems. Authorities said at least 11 projects, either completed or under construction, were damaged in the floods. Rescuers began pumping air into a tunnel over the weekend, but families of those trapped said the measure should have been taken earlier.
A team managed to enter a tunnel leading to one hydropower plant on Monday but withdrew after finding no one inside.
“The longer it takes, the more our hope dies. This operation must move much faster because every second is meaningful to us,” said Jiban Khadka, whose relative is trapped, describing the effort as “frustratingly slow.”
Shah said rescue operations had been “intensified,” stressing the floods were “not an ordinary” event.
“This incident indicates that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing alongside climate change. 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,” he wrote in a Facebook post late Monday.
Among those anxiously awaiting news is Priya Kharel, whose brother Milan was working as an engineer at the Upper Trishuli‑1 plant when the floods hit.
“Those who returned from the hydropower site said there were people inside the tunnel,” she told BBC Nepali. “So there is hope that if the army reaches them quickly, they can be saved.”
