Four more Australians have been found alive in Nepal, leaving 38 unaccounted for a week after flooding tore through the Rasuwa valley on the Nepal-Tibet border. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed the revised figure on Wednesday.
Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority put the death toll in Nepal at 1,114 as of Wednesday morning, with 3,916 people still missing. Chinese authorities have separately reported 16 dead and 546 missing in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The two counts are held by different agencies and are not directly comparable.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said nine of the Australians on the missing list had crossed the border into China at the time of the disaster. One Australian previously unaccounted for was located in Tibet on Tuesday and is receiving consular assistance.
The flooding began on 26 August. Scientists have attributed it to a bedrock collapse beneath a Himalayan glacier, which registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event and sent ice, rock and water down the valley. Satellite imagery reviewed after the event showed a large section of ice breaking away.
The search has concentrated on the hydropower sites. At least 900 workers are unaccounted for across 12 damaged projects in the Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, and about 500 of them are believed to be inside tunnels. Four bodies have been recovered from three tunnels filled with mud. At the Upper Trishuli-1 project alone, 576 people are missing and roughly 300 are thought to be underground.
Arnold Dix, a Melbourne engineer working with the rescue effort, described conditions at sites that no longer resemble what the maps show. "I know that sounds incredible, but they were gone and the topography completely changed," he said. Workers who sheltered in powerhouses deep inside the tunnels would have water, he said, and people can survive a long time with water.
Crews are using explosives to break up boulders, pumping water out of the tunnels and assessing whether vertical drilling is possible.
About 11,814 people have been rescued. Roughly 84,270 people across 17 municipalities have been affected, more than 32,000 of them children. Bodies have been carried as far as 240 kilometres downstream into India. With mortuaries full, Nepali authorities have begun burying unidentified remains after taking DNA samples.
That process is the source of the loudest complaint from families. Anamika Shrestha, whose father is missing, said the response needed specialists. "We need specialised missing person search teams and then forensic and DNA support, and proper identification of anyone who has been recovered," she said.
Australia has committed $8 million in emergency assistance and deployed 18 response personnel to Nepal. Australian Defence Force aircraft have been delivering shelter kits and solar lights.
Flood warnings remain in place for communities along rivers in the Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, Gorkha and Chitwan districts. DFAT has not said how many of the 38 Australians are believed to have been in the immediate flood zone, and the tunnel searches are continuing.
