Nepal, flood death toll rises to 903: search continues for workers in tunnels

This newspaper has been following since August 29 the aftermath of the wave of ice, rock and mud that struck the border area between Nepal and Tibet on August 26. Today’s new development is the official Nepalese count, updated and considerably larger than those previously available.

According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, Nepal’s national disaster management authority, the toll stands at at least 903 dead, 1,473 injured and 4,247 missing (Al Jazeera; CNN). Among the missing in Nepal, 592 are foreign nationals as of August 31.

On the Chinese side, authorities in the Tibetan region report at least 16 dead and 546 missing. The two counts should not be added together without qualification: they come from different administrations, with criteria for registering the missing that the available sources do not describe. These figures remain subject to updates, and as already stated in these pages, the newspaper will state the direction of any future revision, upward or downward.

The tunnels

The most specific and most dramatic part of the rescue operation concerns the hydropower plants. Nepalese teams, joined by Chinese and Indian experts, are searching for more than 900 workers believed trapped in the tunnels of about a dozen hydropower projects. This is a figure of the same order of magnitude as the total confirmed deaths, which explains the priority given to this front: diversion tunnels are enclosed structures, into which water and solid material enter but do not exit.

The available excerpts do not clarify a decisive point: whether the roughly 900 workers are entirely included within the 4,247 missing already counted by the national authority, or whether they partly constitute a separate group. Until this figure is made explicit, adding the two numbers together would produce a figure without foundation.

The burials at Chitwan

The third new element concerns the handling of bodies. Mass burials have taken place in Chitwan: nearly 200 unidentified bodies were buried because the available refrigerated storage was insufficient. This is an operational detail that says much about the scale of the event and has a concrete consequence for the figures: identifications carried out after burial require different procedures and longer timeframes, and may move people from the missing column to the confirmed-victims column even weeks later.

This piece’s method

This piece relies on two sources recorded as independent of each other, Al Jazeera and CNN. The figures on deaths, injuries and missing persons come from a national public authority, not from eyewitness accounts. The newspaper does not publish names or details that would make the people involved identifiable.

What we don’t know

We do not know the geographical breakdown of the 4,247 missing, nor how many of the 592 foreign nationals belong to the plants’ workforce. The condition of the tunnels is not known — whether flooded, blocked or partially accessible — nor how many of the roughly twelve affected plants already have rescue teams on site. Finally, the available excerpts lack an official estimate of the number of people left isolated without road connections.