Hope remains in Nepal: Six Australians rescued, while 46 hydropower workers believed to be alive

Search-and-rescue teams have found four Australians alive who had been considered missing after massive floods and landslides in Nepal. With them, the number of Australian nationals rescued has risen to six.

Despite the positive news, dozens of other Australians remain unaccounted for.

Among those rescued is 26-year-old Kara Severino from Wollongong. He managed to leave the affected area by joining a group of people trying to evacuate by tractor.

One Australian national was rescued on Tuesday, while four others were found on Wednesday. Authorities have not yet released the identities of the last five people. According to them, one was found in Nepal, another in China and three others outside the disaster zone.

The Australians were reported missing after their families lost contact with them following the floods. Until they were rescued, their relatives did not know that they had survived.

More than 4,850 people remain missing, including 38 Australian nationals. Nepalese police have announced that the death toll in Nepal has reached 1,118. On the Tibetan side of the border, Chinese authorities report 16 deaths and 546 missing people.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the rescue of the Australian nationals as encouraging news amid the tragedy.

“Amid all this tragedy, we are seeing some positive news. Today it has been confirmed that five more Australians are safe,” Albanese said. He added that Australian authorities were working together with local authorities to identify and locate other missing people.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is sending air force aircraft carrying humanitarian aid to the region. Australian crisis-management teams have also been deployed in Nepal, where they are assisting rescue operations and the Australian embassy.

Some of the Australians who have still not been found are children. The youngest is believed to be an 11-year-old who was travelling with his 14-year-old brother and their parents.

The family was travelling on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, which is considered sacred by several religions in Asia.

The floods and landslides have caused extensive damage to Nepal’s infrastructure. Local authorities have brought nearly 12,000 people to safety in the central part of the country, while rescue teams are expanding their search into the tunnels of hydropower projects, where hundreds of workers are believed to be trapped.

One of the main sites of the operation is the Rasuvagadi hydropower plant, located in Rasuva district near the border with China.

An official from the Nepal Electricity Authority said that 46 workers were believed to be trapped in an underground space inside a tunnel. According to him, there is hope that they are still alive.

The official said the workers might have food and water available, while teams were attempting to break through to the area where they are thought to be located.

So far, 279 people have been rescued from the affected hydropower projects. They were hit by massive amounts of ice, rocks, mud and debris after a glacier collapsed near the border with China.

At least 639 other people remain missing. Teams from Nepal, India and China are working to penetrate the rubble and tunnels in the hope of finding survivors.

At the other hydropower facility, Upper Trishuli 3A, rescue teams spent nearly six days locating the tunnels, which had been covered by large quantities of mud.

The scale of the destruction is enormous. A preliminary assessment by the United Nations Development Programme estimates that the floods and landslides have generated at least 2.2 million tonnes of debris, including parts of buildings, rocks and sediment.

This amount of debris weighs roughly as much as six buildings the size of the Empire State Building, giving an indication of the scale of the destruction caused by the natural disaster.

Search and rescue operations are continuing, as Nepalese authorities and those of neighboring countries work to locate missing people and rescue dozens of workers believed to still be alive beneath the rubble.