Race against time to find workers missing in Nepal’s hydropower tunnels. Here’s what we know
Nepal's Flooded Tunnels: A Desperate Search for Hundreds of Trapped Workers
Qwenews.com – Flash floods that swept through Nepal's mountainous interior last week have buried critical sections of hydropower infrastructure under meters of mud and debris, leaving at least 933 workers unaccounted for across multiple projects along the Trishuli river basin. Rescue teams, foreign geological specialists, and military engineers are now engaged in a race against time and terrain to determine whether any of those workers remain alive inside the sealed, reinforced tunnels.
The Trishuli river carves through some of the most remote and rugged districts in the country, where roads are narrow, bridges are few, and weather can shift from clear skies to torrential downpours within hours. The loss of key transport links during the flooding has compounded an already extraordinary logistical challenge: reaching the tunnel portals, staging equipment, and maintaining supply lines for crews working in near-total darkness and saturated ground.
Scale of the Crisis
Nepal's national disaster management agency confirmed the figure of 933 missing workers spread across various hydropower installations in the Trishuli corridor. A separate tally compiled on Saturday by the Independent Power Producers' Association (IPPAN) placed approximately 900 workers missing at eleven distinct hydro projects struck by the flooding. Not every missing person was necessarily inside a tunnel when the water arrived; some may have been on surface structures, in transit between sites, or in administrative buildings adjacent to the plants. The exact breakdown remains unknown.
What is equally uncertain is how many of the trapped individuals are still breathing. The tunnels themselves are deep, heavily reinforced concrete-and-steel structures, some extending several kilometers from their surface portals. Interior spaces within those tunnels — control rooms, maintenance bays, small kitchens — could theoretically sustain a small group for days or even weeks if sealed from the floodwater. Oxygen availability, however, is the variable no one can yet confirm from the outside.
Trishuli 3A: Digging Toward the Unknown
At the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant, forty-two workers were listed as missing. The tunnel connecting the surface portal to the underground powerhouse — where dozens of personnel were on shift when the flood struck — stretches more than four kilometers (2.5 miles). Arnold Dix, an Australian geologist who has been advising the rescue operation at the site, explained the uncertainty facing crews attempting to bore through the tunnel ceiling:
"So, we might only have to dig 10 meters, or we might have to dig 100 meters."
Beyond the simple question of distance, the turbine room at the plant's core presents a secondary hazard. If emergency shutdown systems failed during the flood, that chamber could be fully inundated. Any water released by the rescuers' drilling operations could then cascade toward the workers attempting to reach trapped colleagues. At the time of reporting, crews had managed to cut an opening large enough to rappel into the tunnel using ropes and harnesses. They called out into the darkness. No answer came. In earlier phases of the operation, compressed air was pumped into the tunnel and food parcels were pushed through the breach.
Dix described the structural complexity of penetrating the reinforced station:
"We need special equipment to get through the steel and everything that's surrounding the turbine room. So, it's layer upon layer of technical difficulties."
Officials indicated that the next phase would involve sending trained rescuers into the tunnel carrying oxygen supplies, medical kits, two-way communication gear, and cameras to assess conditions ahead.
Chilime: Chest-Deep Mud and a 130-Meter Standoff
At the Chilime Hydropower Plant, six workers were believed to be missing inside the facility. Jenjen Lama, a mountain guide participating in the search-and-rescue effort, described the layout: a 250-meter (820-foot) tunnel descending from the surface before joining a larger complex that houses a service bay, a control room, and the main hydropower transformer.
On Sunday, rescue teams entered the tunnel and found it "completely blocked by deep, muddy sediment and sludge," with the debris reaching up to their chests. They advanced only 130 meters before conditions forced them to halt. Lama noted that damaged infrastructure in the surrounding area also prevented helicopters from landing nearby, limiting aerial support.
"There is the kitchen, there is some food … but I don't know about the oxygen."
International Support and the Broader Toll
Specialists dispatched by India and China arrived over the weekend to join engineers from the Nepal Army and Nepali police already on the ground. Drone units fitted with thermal imaging cameras were deployed to scan for heat signatures near tunnel entrances, while ground crews worked to locate obscured portals and excavate accumulated mud. In parallel, teams drilled through the reinforced concrete and steel roofing of the tunnels to create access points.
Dix estimated that as many as twenty-seven hydropower plants sustained damage in the flooding, with roughly twelve of them effectively destroyed. The scale of infrastructure loss underscores how concentrated Nepal's recent energy ambitions have become in a handful of river valleys.
Nepal's Hydropower Bet
Over the past decade, Nepal, China, and India have poured billions of dollars into Himalayan hydropower development, betting that the country's fast-flowing rivers could generate enough electricity to power domestic industry and export surplus power to neighboring grids. The Trishuli basin alone hosts a dense cluster of projects at various stages of construction and operation. That concentration means a single catastrophic flood event can simultaneously incapacitate dozens of sites and strand hundreds of workers in isolated mountain terrain with limited medical evacuation capacity.
At least 279 hydropower workers have been rescued or have managed to walk their way out of the mud-choked tunnels. Each survivor carries a harrowing account of hours or days spent in darkness, cold, and uncertainty while waiting for help to arrive. For the families of those still unaccounted for, every hour of continued silence tightens the question no one yet has an answer to: how many of the missing are still alive, and how long can they endure before the next rescue attempt reaches them?
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