Nepal Toll Passes 800 as Air Is Pumped to Trapped Workers
The flood toll passed 800 with more than 3,000 missing, as Nepal’s army made the first breakthrough at the Trishuli tunnels — inserting a pipe and pumping air to the chamber where more than a hundred workers are believed trapped, with excavation now beginning. Fresh flood warnings were issued as river flows rose again from upstream, pausing the search on the Tibetan side. The missing Britons rose to 48, with 15 unaccounted for in China; burials have begun after DNA sampling.
The air pipe is the disaster’s first genuinely hopeful engineering: if workers survived the inundation in the tunnel’s air pockets, oxygen buys the days excavation needs, and the home minister’s announcement that rescue teams will go inside converts hope into a plan. Everything else darkens — 933 hydropower workers among the missing describes an industry entombed, the rising Bhotekoshi says the mountain is not finished, and burials after DNA sampling is what a state does when the missing outnumber the mortuary. The transnational ledger grows stranger: Washington disputes Beijing’s count of missing Americans, while 33 Latvians appear on Tibet’s list. For 48 British families, the FCDO’s “around the clock” is now a fifth night. Watch the tunnel excavation — it is the story that can still end well.