A WEEK after flash floods devastated northern and central Nepal, the toll of the disaster continued to grow on Wednesday, with 1,127 people confirmed dead and 4,858 still missing, Nepal Police said.
Among those still searching for answers are families trying to identify loved ones. Details of 911 unidentified bodies have been uploaded to the Nepal Police website to help families identify missing relatives.
Nepal Police said 348 more bodies were recovered from Chitwan, 217 from Nawalparasi East, 190 from Nawalparasi West and 155 from Nuwakot.
Another 66 bodies were recovered from Gorkha, 59 from Dhading, 45 from Rasuwa and 38 from Tanahu.
Police said postmortem and legal identification procedures had been completed for 1,113 bodies, while 95 had been handed over to relatives.
Mass burials begin in Nepal as glacier collapse leaves more than 3,000 missing
So far, security forces have rescued 6,541 people from the affected areas. But the search continues for 4,858 people whose whereabouts remain unknown, police said.
Authorities have deployed 7,912 police personnel to flood-hit areas for search and rescue operations, relief distribution and the management of recovered bodies.
Police teams are also moving families from high-risk areas to safer locations, clearing roads blocked by debris and coordinating search, rescue and relief operations with local authorities and residents.
The flash floods, triggered by a collapse or avalanche of ice and rock near the Nepal-Tibet border, devastated towns and villages in northern and central Nepal on August 26.
The search for those still missing is being further disrupted by continued rain.
Rain is disrupting search and rescue operations in Rasuwa and Nuwakot. Meteorologist Rojan Lamichhane at the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology said there was also a possibility of moderate rain in Bhotekoshi flood-affected areas on Wednesday afternoon.
Nepal floods: UK races to trace 33 missing Britons as death
Lamichhane said nearby areas affected by the Bhotekoshi flood, including Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading, may experience moderate rain in the afternoon.
According to the department, the highest rainfall recorded in the past 12 hours was 60.2 millimetres at the weather station in Nosyam Pati, Sindhupalchok.
Moderate rainfall has occurred in many areas of Bagmati, Gandaki and Lumbini provinces, while some areas of Koshi, Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces have experienced light to moderate rainfall.
The department said the weather would generally be cloudy across the country on Wednesday afternoon. Authorities said there was a possibility of heavy rain at a few places in the mountainous regions of Koshi, Bagmati and Gandaki provinces on Wednesday night.
In areas affected by the Bhotekoshi flood, the conditions inside tunnels have added another difficulty to efforts to find missing workers.
Executive Chief of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), Dharma Raj Uprety, said water filling a tunnel due to rain had caused additional challenges in search and rescue operations.
According to Uprety, overnight rain caused water to fill the hydropower tunnel.
Search and rescue operations have been hampered by the difficult conditions inside the project tunnels.
Teams involving the Nepali Army, Armed Police Force, foreign technical experts and project employees have been conducting search and rescue operations, but they have yet to locate the missing workers.
Former president of the Independent Power Producers' Association, Nepal (IPPAN), Ganesh Karki, said rescue efforts had also been slowed because equipment cannot easily be transported to the tunnels.
He said locating the entrances to the tunnels had itself become difficult.
“The material carried by the river has reached over the tunnels,” Karki said. “It has become difficult even to determine the exact location of the tunnel entrances.”
