Two survivors rescued in Nepal 10 days after catastrophic floods

By Linda Bordoni 

According to authorities, the man was rescued from a hydropower tunnel, bringing the total to three workers pulled alive from the Trishuli hydropower plant in Nepal, which was struck by flash floods that washed away valleys and buried entire villages on 26 August.

The rescued woman was found alive inside a damaged house in Nuwakot town and airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment.

At least 1,375 people have been killed in the floods, with more than 5,000 missing according to Nepal’s disaster management agency.

A joint rescue team of Nepalese military personnel and South Korean disaster experts has been trying to reach surviving workers in the 12 hydropower stations across Nepal where some 900 people are missing, with roughly 500 believed to be trapped in various tunnels.s

Meanwhile, geophysicists say that satellite images from just days before the collapse of rock and ice that triggered the catastrophe suggest that a section of the glacier and the rocks it sat on top of were accelerating in the weeks before the actual collapse.

However, the precise sequence of events remains unclear, and experts say such events are difficult to predict using existing monitoring techniques.

What they do agree upon is that with the high-altitude regions of the Himalayas warming 50 percent faster than the global average, they face greater environmental risks.

(Source: AP and other agencies)

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