93 Workers Missing In Nepal Hydropower Tunnel; Thermal Drone Search Finds No One

The team investigating a hydropower project in Nepal that was hit by floods has not been able to trace the 93 workers thought to be trapped inside a tunnel in Rasuwa district. A thermal drone operation proceeded to the extreme end of the tunnel but failed to find any persons.

The search was conducted at the 111MW Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Project where flooding on the Bhote Koshi river had raised concerns that workers may have been trapped underground.

A team of Nepali Army, engineers and drone operators then went in and used thermal imaging technology to get a closer look at areas that were hard to reach and potentially dangerous to reach directly. But an operation did not reveal anyone was still in the building.

The Army-led rescue team is back after completing the search, said Nepal’s Prime Minister’s Secretariat. The drone conducted a search and when no workers were seen in the tunnel, the operation was cancelled and the rescuers went back to Dhunche.

The development is coming at a time when the country has been battered by floods. During the country’s flooding, hundreds of workers were below ground at various hydropower projects.

Rescue efforts have been hindered in deciding whether missing workers have been getting trapped inside tunnels, rescued to safer areas, or swept out by floodwaters.

As of Monday, 933 people involved in hydropower projects have been reported missing, according to the Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA).

Till date, 279 people have been rescued from hydropower tunnels, 254 from the Upper Trishuli-1 project and 18 from the Langtang Khola project.

The Independent Power Producers’ Association, Nepal (IPPAN) reported that 897 workers are out of touch in 11 hydropower projects in Rasuwa and Nuwakot.

Meanwhile, more than 900 people have been reported dead and approximately 4,500 people are missing since Wednesday due to the devastating floods, according to the report.

Authorities are still doing search-and-rescue operations in affected areas, particularly around hydropower facilities where a lot of workers had been present at the time of the flooding.

Infrastructure damage and flooded tunnels and rough terrain continue to complicate the search for the missing.