Nepal races against time to rescue 600 hydropower workers trapped in mud-filled tunnels

More than six hundred workers are trapped in tunnels beneath Nepal's Trishuli River, buried under mud and debris from a catastrophic flood that has killed 939 people across the Nepal-Tibet border. Rescue teams are now using explosives to blast through hillsides, racing against what they fear is a narrowing window to find anyone still alive.

The disaster struck Nepal's hydropower infrastructure along the Trishuli-3A site and at least ten other projects in the region. An international team of Chinese and Nepalese military personnel, supported by experts from India, Korea, and Australia, has been working to locate and access the submerged tunnels. As of Monday, rescuers had managed to pull 279 people from the sites, but the vast majority remain unaccounted for. The broader flooding event has left 3,925 people missing across both countries, of whom 592 are foreign nationals.

The families waiting for news are caught between fragile hope and deepening dread. Anushila Bhandari, whose husband Aurus—a 33-year-old engineer—disappeared at the project site, told the BBC she wishes he would simply come home. Sita Pandey, whose husband was inside the plant when the floods hit, clings to a fifty-fifty belief that he might survive, reasoning that oxygen systems inside the tunnels could sustain life. Priya Kharel, sister of engineer Milan who was working at the Upper Trishuli-1 plant, holds onto reports from survivors who say people were still inside the tunnels when they escaped. But Jiban Khadka, whose relative is trapped, expressed the anguish of watching rescue efforts move what he called a frustratingly slow pace. "Every second is meaningful to us," he said.

The rescue operation faces extraordinary physical obstacles. Arnold Dix, an Australian engineer assisting Nepalese authorities remotely and former head of the International Tunnelling Association, described the landscape as transformed beyond recognition. "The actual signature of them has gone—everything is just missing. It looks like a lunar landscape," he told the BBC. Boulders larger than houses now block access routes. Rescuers began pumping air into tunnels over the weekend, but families say this should have happened sooner. A team that managed to enter one tunnel on Monday found it empty and withdrew.

The death toll reflects the scale of the catastrophe. Of the 900 bodies recovered so far, only 4 percent have been identified. In Chitwan, a district far downstream where the river deposited nearly 300 corpses, workers in white protective equipment have been conducting makeshift burials in a hastily excavated forest area. Medical staff and volunteers are extracting DNA from unidentified remains, though the district chief officer acknowledged the system is overwhelmed—there are not enough freezers to store the dead. Relatives will eventually be able to claim their loved ones once DNA testing is complete.

Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah framed the disaster as a warning about climate change in the Himalayan region. "This incident indicates that the risks we face in the Himalayan region are increasing alongside climate change," he wrote on Facebook, calling for Nepal to raise the issue with the international community. The country has invested heavily in hydropower development along its mountainous river systems for years, viewing it as central to economic growth. Now that infrastructure lies damaged, and the human cost of that development strategy has become impossible to ignore.

In Tibet, Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, though footage of the floods has been heavily censored. Chinese officials have imposed administrative penalties—warnings, fines, and short detentions—on people who speculate online that casualty numbers are significantly higher. Nepal has similarly ordered the removal of content deemed misinformation about the floods. The rescue operation continues, but as days pass and the air inside the tunnels grows thinner, the families waiting for word understand that time itself has become the most critical factor.