Rescue teams enter mud-choked hydropower tunnel in flood-hit Rasuwa

Search and rescue operations under way in Rasuwa

TRISHULI BAZAAR (NUWAKOT, NEPAL): Everest veterans and some of Nepal's most highly trained mountain guides joined rescue operations in flood-ravaged Rasuwa, with a specialist team entering a mud-choked hydropower tunnel Saturday and pushing around 120m inside before thick sludge and debris blocked further movement. The deployment brought skills normally used on Himalayan expeditions - rope fixing, cliff access, helicopter longline operations and movement through unstable terrain - into parts of the disaster zone where roads had disappeared and conventional rescue methods were proving difficult. The team entered the tunnel at Chilime hydropower project, where six people were believed to be inside. IFMGA-certified guide Ashish Gurung, Dorjee Sherpa and veteran climber Jenjen Lama moved into the tunnel using rope protection and fixed lines before chest-deep sludge stopped them. They recovered a camera bag during the search and concluded that pumps and excavation equipment would be needed before rescuers could safely move deeper. The Chilime search formed part of a much larger tunnel rescue challenge across the flood-hit hydropower corridor. Six people were believed trapped inside the Chilime tunnel, while at Upper Trishuli-1 around 300 workers were believed to remain inside its tunnel system. The affected workforce across the projects included Nepalese, Indian, Chinese and South Korean nationals, with authorities still reconciling project attendance records and rescue lists to establish exactly how many remained trapped or uncontactable. Lama, a veteran high-altitude guide, has summited Mount Everest six times and Ama Dablam 12 times, besides climbing Lhotse and Manaslu. Another climber in the wider operation was Dawa Jangbu Sherpa, a guide with more than two decades of mountaineering experience. The specialist contingent also included Dawa Singhi Hyolmo, an IFMGA-certified international mountain guide and national mountaineering instructor with more than a decade of high-altitude experience, and fellow IFMGA-certified guides Man Raj Gurung and Ashish Gurung. Pemba Wangchu Sherpa, Bikram Karki, Sabin Thakuri, Geshman Tamang, Sandesh Sherpa and Chhiring Sherpa were among other trained climbers and rescuers mobilised. NNMGA and Nepal Mountaineering Instructors Association deployed helicopter longline and ground teams after floods swept away roads and bridges and left parts of Rasuwa accessible only across steep slopes, cliffs and unstable ground.