KATHMANDU — The Korea Disaster Relief Team arrived in Nepal's capital on the 2nd to support search and rescue operations, one week after massive floods swept through the Himalayan mountains along the Nepal-China border.
The Air Force's KC-330 Cygnus multirole tanker transport carrying the team landed at Tribhuvan International Airport at about 6:27 a.m. local time. The 44-member team comprises three officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including team leader Lee Kyu-ho, director-general of the ministry's Development Cooperation Bureau, four from the Korea International Cooperation Agency and 37 from the National Fire Agency. They brought five search dogs and equipment including high-resolution camera drones, acoustic and video detectors for locating buried victims, and thermal imaging devices.
Working with Nepali authorities, the team will search for victims including nine South Koreans who went missing after the floods struck on the 26th of last month. The deployment is scheduled to last about 10 days but could be extended depending on conditions on the ground. Nepal's government had requested that South Korea send an emergency relief team to assist with search and rescue in the affected areas.
The Nepali government said it was inserting pipes into tunnels at the Upper Trishuli 1 and Trishuli 3A power plants in the Rasuwa district of Bagmati Province to pump in air. The nine missing South Korean workers had been employed at Upper Trishuli 1. Rescuers also pumped air into the Trishuli 3A tunnel after using explosives to blast a mountain slope. Eleven hydropower projects in Nepal have been damaged by the flooding.
Nepali troops and mountain rescue units dispatched from China and India are attempting to enter the tunnels through blasting and excavation to reach at least 600 workers trapped inside several hydropower plants. Nepali authorities have confirmed that at least 639 people are stranded at multiple hydropower sites. Most are trapped inside tunnels, leaving a slim chance of survival that rescuers are still counting on.
The death toll from the floods in Nepal has risen to 1,050, according to the country's disaster management authority as cited by AFP and Reuters. Combined with 16 deaths on the Chinese side, the total stands at 1,066.
The BBC reported that rescuers were blasting large boulders blocking the tunnels and digging holes while clearing thick mud and debris covering the area. It said the work has been hampered because the tunnels are already filled with mud or have flooded as large volumes of water pour into the holes being dug.
