Nepal Floods Claim 469 Lives, With 900 Missing Including 500 Tourists
KATHMANDU: At least 469 people have been killed in devastating floods and landslides along the Nepal-Tibet border, in which the death toll remains on the rise.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office of Nepal said that rescue workers have brought 350 people out of a tunnel at the Trishuli River and military teams are in a frantic race to reach 100 people who are still inside.
Missing Persons and Evacuations in Tibet
Previously, the Nepali government had said 900 people were missing, including around 500 foreign tourists.
Authorities in Tibet have managed to bring 555 tourists out from areas where they were trapped to safe zones, China’s official state news agency Xinhua reported. However, these figures are hard to come by in information published in Tibet after the flood, since China has stringent regulations on what can be published in the media, and it remains uncertain if they are the same figures as reported by the Nepali authorities. The report by the Xinhua news agency was not clear about the nationality of the tourists who were evacuated, but India, Australia and the United States have confirmed that their citizens are among those missing.
Risk of Secondary Floods and Damage to Infrastructure
While rescue teams scramble to find missing people and possibly survivors, worrying accounts of further flooding hazards have struck relief workers to the core, a Red Cross official told media outlets.
The water level is continuously rising in this huge water mass and fears are high for its possible overflow to create more disaster near the China-Nepal border. The glacial collapse sent forth a swarm of water that generated a powerful wave, flooding houses, cars and roads, destroying an important trade route connecting Nepal and Tibet, local officials said.
The disaster has caused a massive damage to Nepal’s critical infrastructure, with 80 bridges having been damaged and around 40 km of paved roads damaged. The rugged border region is an important road corridor for the movement of goods between Nepal and its second largest trade partner, China. As a result, these key modes of transport are wiped out, resulting in a huge cost to rebuild the nation and significant disruption to cross-border trade.