Nepal observed a national day of mourning on Monday to honor victims of the catastrophic August 26 floods, with government offices flying flags at half-mast and families performing traditional mourning rites.
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Monday marks the 13th day since the disaster, which has claimed more than 1,300 lives across Nepal and Tibet while leaving approximately 5,000 people missing, including foreign nationals, according to Nepal’s disaster management authority. In accordance with Hindu tradition, which prescribes a 13-day mourning period, close relatives have remained at home receiving visitors paying respects, culminating in rituals on the final day to pray for the departed souls.
Several families whose loved ones remain missing have conducted symbolic funeral ceremonies. In Hindu practice, cremation represents an essential final rite, and performing these ceremonies without recovered remains has offered some families a measure of spiritual closure.
In Kathmandu, relatives gathered near the prime minister’s office and key ministries demanding accelerated search and rescue operations for hundreds of hydropower plant workers who were either swept away by the raging Bhotekoshi river or buried under debris.
Search operations continue for the hundreds still unaccounted for. Rescuers extracted a Chinese national from a power plant on Saturday, following the rescue of two Nepalese workers from the same facility on Friday.
Rescue efforts have increasingly concentrated on 12 hydropower projects, where approximately 900 workers are missing and roughly 500 are believed trapped in various tunnels, authorities reported.
Unprecedented challenge
The disaster presents an unprecedented challenge, Australian rescue expert Arnold Dix stated Monday, with multiple simultaneous search operations underway in hydropower tunnels.
“We are facing something I have never faced before,” said Dix, president of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association, in a social media post.
“Not one rescue, but multiple potential rescues, unfolding at the same time, in different places, each with its own dangers, uncertainties, and lives that may still be saved.”
Rescue operations continue “with the same tempo we had on day one,” Nepal Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet told AFP on Monday.
“Our focus is on search and rescue at three levels — on ground, by air, and in the tunnels. We are making sure that no one is still stranded.”
The weekend rescue of three workers from deep within tunnels has buoyed hopes of locating additional survivors.
Specialized rescue teams from India, China, South Korea, and the United States have been combing through debris, damaged structures, and tunnels at the project sites in search of survivors.
“We are measured not only by the lives we save, but by the lives we refuse to abandon,” said Dix, who served as a key adviser during the 2023 rescue of 41 men trapped for 17 days inside the collapsed Silkyara tunnel in India’s Uttarakhand state.
“Silkyara taught me never to confuse unlikely with impossible,” he added.
