The death toll from devastating flash floods that swept through Nepal and areas along the China border has risen to 750, while nearly 3,000 people remain missing as rescue operations entered their fourth day.
Nepal’s disaster authorities reported 734 deaths and 2,498 people still missing. Chinese authorities reported a further 16 deaths and 546 missing people. Those unaccounted for include more than 100 Nepalis and nationals from more than a dozen other countries.
Rescue efforts have been hampered by poor weather, rugged terrain and widespread destruction across the mountainous region.
In Nuwakot, one of Nepal’s worst-affected districts, helicopters resumed operations before noon on Saturday after adverse weather temporarily halted flights. Some aircraft delivered urgently needed supplies, including clothing, instant noodles, crackers and rice, while others evacuated survivors from flood-hit communities.
Families of missing people have gathered outside an army camp near Nuwakot, waiting anxiously for information about their relatives.
A Nepali Army official told CBS News that search-and-rescue helicopters could make a combined 15 trips an hour into and out of the disaster zone, potentially amounting to about 500 flights a day. Each flight carries only a handful of people, with some survivors being evacuated on stretchers.
More than 3,700 people have so far been rescued in Nepal, authorities said. Hundreds of those still missing are foreign nationals who were in the region for employment, trekking or pilgrimage to a sacred peak on the Tibetan side of the border.
Warning of further flooding
As the search for survivors continued, Nepal issued a fresh warning on Sunday over the possibility of rising floodwaters.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said it had received information that the flow of the Bhotekoshi River in Rasuwa had increased.
The agency urged search-and-rescue personnel, relief workers and residents in riverside and affected areas, including Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading and Chitwan, to exercise extreme caution.
The United States announced on Saturday that it would provide more than $3.6 million in humanitarian assistance to Nepal. The support includes three months of emergency food assistance expected to reach as many as 10,000 households.
More than 100 workers feared trapped in tunnels
Nepal’s government has also intensified efforts to rescue more than 100 workers believed to be trapped inside tunnels at hydropower projects.
Rescue teams are concentrating on the Trishuli 3A and 3B hydropower sites, although Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha said the workers were not necessarily trapped in a single location.
“Rescue efforts are going on in multiple tunnel sites,” Shrestha said.
Rescuers have managed to reach some areas using helicopter baskets and ropes, but operations have been complicated by four to five feet of mud and a lack of suitable landing areas, Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet said.
At Trishuli 3A, rescuers broke through the mud on Saturday and began pumping air into the tunnel as excavation continued. The Ministry of Energy also said efforts were under way to send a camera inside to locate survivors.
Specialised tunnel-rescue teams from India and China have joined Nepalese rescuers, while Nepal’s mountain rescue teams have brought experience from operations involving climbers on peaks including Mount Everest.
Images released by Nepal’s disaster authorities showed rescue workers wading through thick mud and navigating huge boulders deposited by the floods.
Priti Kharel said she believed her brother, Milan, was among those trapped. Milan, an engineering geologist working for Doosan Enerbility, has not been heard from since the disaster.
“It’s already four days,” Kharel said. “We want the government to rescue him as soon as possible.”
Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said locating those still missing was “currently our national priority.”
He said Nepal had asked neighbouring countries for specialised assistance with tunnel rescue operations, survivor-detection technology, rapid forensic and DNA analysis, and refrigerated morgue facilities.
Khanal said an 11-member tunnel-rescue reconnaissance team from India had already been deployed, while a similar Chinese team was expected to arrive.
Families desperately seek missing relatives
Across relief centres and hospitals, families have continued searching for relatives as the death toll rises.
In Kathmandu, relatives gathered outside the country’s main government hospital, checking help desks and notice boards for information about missing people and injured survivors.
Posters carrying photographs and contact details of missing relatives covered sections of the hospital. Photographs of unidentified bodies were also displayed in an effort to help families establish their identities.
Gajendra Rawat, a security official working at the hospital’s help desk, said around 1,600 missing people had been registered there.
“People are coming from all parts of Nepal,” he said.
Dil Maya Lama travelled from Ramechhap in search of her missing 26-year-old brother.
“I came here with the hope that I might find him. There is no information about him,” she said.
Another relative, Nelza Moktan, said: “I feel hopeless. It has already been four days.”
In Nuwakot, families gathered around lists of people reported missing or dead at a relief centre.
Rajesh Kumar Ram, who was searching for his son, said he remained hopeful that he might still be found alive.
“I’m hopeful, by chance, that my son is somewhere. Maybe they find him stuck somewhere. I’m waiting for that moment only,” he said.
The Red Cross estimates that about 90,000 people have been affected by the floods.
Khanal said Nepal had received more than 57 metric tonnes of relief supplies from India, with additional assistance coming from China, Japan, Australia and other countries.
Fears of another flood
Rescue teams have also been monitoring the threat posed by a new lake formed high in the Himalayas after the initial disaster.
Experts warned that the lake, created following a glacier collapse, had begun to overflow. Basnet said rescue teams were temporarily relocated after receiving warnings of possible additional flooding.
However, monitoring data from China’s Ministry of Water Resources indicated that the lake had shrunk by late Friday, with its water level falling about 32 feet from its peak on Thursday morning, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Scientists have said satellite imagery indicates that the initial flooding was triggered when bedrock beneath a glacier in the Himalayan region collapsed, bringing part of the glacier down with it.
The massive rockfall reportedly registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, sending rocks and meltwater into rivers below and generating torrents that swept through Tibet and Nepal, destroying buildings, bridges and large sections of surrounding terrain.
Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria who is currently based in Bangladesh, described the event as a major collapse in which “a lower part of a glacier has really come off.”
With thousands still unaccounted for, rescue teams continue to race against time and worsening conditions to locate survivors and reach communities cut off by the floods.
