Families Hope for Rescue of Hydropower Workers in Nepal

More than 600 workers are believed to be trapped in a network of mud‑filled tunnels along Nepal’s Trishuli River. Their families are holding on to hope that the missing men can be found alive.

Rescuers are working hard to reach them. They are using explosives to blast into the hillside and then pumping air into the Trishuli‑3A site, because they fear the window to reach survivors is closing.

"I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home," said Anushila Bhandari, wife of Aurus Bhandari, a 33‑year‑old engineer missing on a project site, to BBC Nepali.

The death toll from the flood disaster on the Nepal‑Tibet border reached 939, according to the country’s disaster management authority. The agency also revised its estimate of the number of missing to 3,925, of whom 592 are foreign nationals. Roughly one in seven missing people are believed to be workers at the hydropower plants. Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah said that 279 people had been rescued from the sites.

The rescue operation is led by an international team made up of Chinese and Nepalese military personnel, while experts from India, Korea and Australia are also involved.

"I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside," Sita Pandey, whose husband was working in the plant when the floods hit, told Nepalese daily Kantipur.

Ne pal relies heavily on hydropower and has spent years developing the projects along its mountainous river systems. At least 11 projects either completed or under construction were damaged in the floods, authorities said.

Rescuers began pumping air into a tunnel over the weekend, but the families of those trapped say that it should have been done earlier. A team was able to get into a tunnel leading to one hydropower plant earlier, but withdrew after finding no one there.

"The longer it takes, the more our hope dies. This operation must move much faster because every second is meaningful to us," Jiban Khadka, whose relative is also trapped inside the plant, told Kantipur. "It's a frustratingly slow operation," he added.

Prime Minister Shah said rescue operations had been "intensified," noting that 11,379 people had been rescued so far.

Another family member anxiously awaiting news is Priya Kharel, whose brother Milan was working as an engineer in 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 News Nepali. "So there is hope that if the army reaches them quickly, they can be saved."

Australian engineer Arnold Dix, who has been helping Nepalese authorities with the underground search operations remotely, said rescuers had been struggling to find the tunnels. "The actual signature of them has gone – everything is just missing. It looks like a lunar landscape," he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One.

Once rescuers knew where the power stations were, Dix said they could then decide the best way to access them, which typically involves digging and "blasting boulders". "There are boulders bigger than houses – I've never seen that before in my life. It's just an extraordinary operation," he added.

He said he still has some hope for those trapped underground, given the protection the subterranean environment might have offered from the deluge above.

Meanwhile, in Chitwan, a district far downstream from where the floods first hit, makeshift burials were taking place after the Himalayan nation’s river systems brought nearly 300 dead bodies to its banks. The air was thick with the smell of decay, as men wearing white Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) including masks carried unidentified corpses into trucks.

Medical staff and volunteers worked to extract DNA from the unidentified remains. Ganesh Aryaal, the chief district officer, told BBC Nepali that relatives will still be able to extricate the remains of their loved ones, once they are identified through DNA testing. "We don't have enough freezers here… We had to choose this last alternative of temporary burial system. We are really overwhelmed," he said.

In Tibet, the official death toll is 16, with 546 reported missing, according to Chinese state media. Footage of the floods has been heavily censored in China.

Chinese authorities have imposed "administrative penalties" – which can range from warnings and fines to short detentions – on people speculating online that the casualty numbers are a lot higher than reported. In Nepal, authorities have also ordered the removal of online content that they deem to be misinformation about the floods.

The rescue teams are working around the clock, but the families’ patience is wearing thin. Every minute counts, and the hope that the trapped workers will be found alive is tied to the speed and effectiveness of the operations. The international cooperation, the use of explosives, and the careful pumping of air into the tunnels all aim to bring those workers back to their families.

The situation remains tense, and the world watches as Nepal and its partners continue to fight the flood’s aftermath and search for those still missing.

The floods have left a deep scar on Nepal’s hydropower infrastructure and on the lives of thousands of families. While some workers have been rescued, many remain missing, and the search continues under difficult conditions. The international community’s support and the resilience of the Nepali people give hope that the trapped workers may yet be found.