According to CBS News, poor weather and difficult terrain have continued to hamper aerial rescue operations in the affected areas. The post Death toll in Nepal-Tibet flash floods rises to 750, about 3,000 still missing appeared first on Tribune Online .
The death toll from devastating flash floods that struck Nepal and areas along the China border has risen to 750, with about 3,000 people still missing as rescue operations entered their fourth day.
Nepal’s disaster agency said 734 people had died and 2,498 remained missing, while Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing persons. The missing include more than 100 Nepalis and people from over a dozen countries.
Poor weather and difficult terrain have continued to hamper aerial rescue operations in the affected areas.
In Nuwakot, one of the districts badly affected by the floods, helicopters resumed operations before noon on Saturday after poor weather temporarily disrupted rescue efforts.
Some helicopters transported relief materials, including clothes, instant noodles, crackers and rice, while others returned from flood-hit communities carrying survivors.
Families of missing persons have gathered outside an army camp near Nuwakot, waiting anxiously for information about their loved ones.
A Nepali Army official told CBS News that its search and rescue helicopters could make a combined 15 trips an hour into and out of the disaster zone, amounting to about 500 trips a day. Each flight carries a handful of people, with some survivors transported on stretchers.
Authorities said more than 3,700 people had so far been rescued in Nepal. Hundreds of those still missing are foreigners who were in the region for work, trekking or pilgrimage to a sacred peak on the Tibet side of the border.
Amid the continuing search for survivors, Nepal issued a warning on Sunday about the possibility of further rising flood waters.
“We have received information that the flood flow in the Bhotekoshi River in Rasuwa has increased further,” the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said in an alert obtained by Agence France-Presse.
“Therefore, all personnel engaged in search, rescue, and relief operations, those in riverside areas, and everyone else in affected areas including Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, and Chitwan are requested to exercise caution.”
The US State Department said on Saturday that it was providing more than $3.6 million in humanitarian assistance to Nepal. The aid includes three months of emergency food support expected to benefit up to 10,000 households.
Nepal’s government said more than 100 workers could still be alive and trapped inside tunnels at hydropower projects, with rescue efforts focused on the Trishuli 3A and 3B sites.
Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha clarified that the workers were not necessarily trapped at one location, saying “rescue efforts are going on in multiple tunnel sites.”
Rescuers have reached some people using helicopter baskets and ropes but have faced four to five feet of mud and limited landing areas, Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet said.
On Saturday, rescuers broke through the mud at Trishuli 3A and began sending air into the tunnel, while excavation efforts continued. The Ministry of Energy also said efforts had begun to send a camera into the tunnel.
Specialised Indian and Chinese tunnel-rescue teams have joined the operation, alongside Nepal’s mountain rescue teams, which have experience assisting climbers on peaks including Mount Everest.
Photographs released by Nepal’s disaster office showed rescue workers moving through thick mud and navigating large boulders deposited by the floods.
Priti Kharel said she believed her brother, Milan, was among those trapped. Milan, an engineering geologist with Doosan Enerbility, has not been heard from since the floods.
“It’s already four days,” Kharel said. “We want the government to rescue him as soon as possible.”
Nepalese Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said locating those still missing was “currently our national priority.”
He said the government had requested specialised assistance from neighbouring countries for tunnel rescue operations, survivor-detection technology, rapid forensic and DNA analysis, and morgue refrigerators.
Khanal said an 11-member tunnel rescue reconnaissance team from India had been deployed, while a similar team from China was expected to arrive shortly.
At relief centres and hospitals, families have continued searching for missing relatives as the death toll rises.
In Kathmandu, relatives gathered outside the main government hospital, checking help desks and notice boards for information about missing people and injured survivors.
Posters bearing photographs and contact details of missing relatives covered parts of the hospital, while photographs of unidentified bodies were also displayed to help families identify them.
Gajendra Rawat, a security official at the hospital help desk, said about 1,600 missing persons had so far been registered.
“People are coming from all parts of Nepal,” he said.
Dil Maya Lama, who travelled from Ramechhap in search of her missing 26-year-old brother, said: “I came here with the hope that I might find him. There is no information about him.”
Another relative, Nelza Moktan, said: “I feel hopeless. It has already been four days.”
In Nuwakot, families gathered around lists of missing and dead persons posted at a relief centre.
Rajesh Kumar Ram, who was searching for his son, said: “I’m hopeful, by chance, that my son is somewhere. Maybe they find him stuck somewhere. I’m waiting for that moment only.”
The Red Cross said about 90,000 people had likely been affected by the floods.
Khanal said Nepal had received more than 57 metric tonnes of relief supplies from India, with additional assistance arriving from China, Japan, Australia and other countries.
Rescuers have remained on alert over the risk of additional flooding from a new lake formed high in the Himalayas following the initial disaster.
Experts warned that the lake, created after a glacier collapse triggered the floods, had begun to overflow. Basnet said rescue teams had temporarily relocated after warnings of possible further flooding.
However, monitoring data from China’s Ministry of Water Resources showed that the lake had reduced in size by late Friday, with its water level dropping by 32 feet from its peak on Thursday morning, according to Chinese broadcaster CCTV.
Scientists said satellite images suggested 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 away buildings, bridges and earth across Tibet and Nepal.
Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria who is currently based in Bangladesh, said “a lower part of a glacier has really come off.”
I’ve kept the quoted statements intact, retained the names as provided, and tightened the story to a Nigerian newspaper-style structure of roughly 700 words.
(CBS)
