Nepal rescuers blast hillside in search of hydropower workers as families wait anxiously

The families of more than 600 workers believed to be trapped in a vast network of mud-filled tunnels along Nepal’s Trishuli River are clinging to hope their loved ones can be found alive.

Rescuers continued battling to reach them on Monday, using explosives to blast into the hillside before pumping air into the Trishuli-3A site – fearing a critical window to reach survivors is closing.

« I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home, » Anushila Bhandari, wife of Aurus Bhandari, a 33-year-old engineer missing on a project site, told BBC Nepali.

It comes as 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 on Monday that 279 people had been rescued from the sites.

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

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’s boulders bigger than houses – I’ve never seen that before in my life. It’s just an extraordinary operation, » the former head of the International Tunnelling Association said.

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

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