Updates: A Tragedy Foretold as Rescuers Seek Hundreds of Entombed Hydropower Workers in Nepal

Here’s hoping Nepal’s brave rescue teams can still save some of the missing, but the boom in Himalayan dam building was long seen as profoundly dangerous

“No hollow or empty space”

Update, Sept. 1, 5 pm US Eastern - [Donate to the Nepal Red Cross Society.]

I have to add this sobering and haunting update on the hunt for any survivors among the hundreds of hydropower project workers in tunnels submerged in mud, water and debris after the August 26 rock and ice collapse in Nepal.

This thermal drone video was taken by the seasoned mountaineering filmmaker Manish Maharjan, at the Rasuwagadhi hydropower project, which began generating electricity in December 2024. He had crossed into Nepal from China right after the disaster and began working with the Nepal Army to try to probe deeper into flooded areas. As the Associated Press reports, he had been able to help locate some survivors in open-air locations, but the tunnels were more challenging:

“We found tunnels were filled with mud like toothpaste in a tube,” Maharjan said. “There was no hollow or empty space inside.”…

At the Rasuwagadhi hydropower project, Maharjan managed to send a drone to search deep inside and all the way to the end of the tunnel but found no sign of any life. “We checked repeatedly but it was filled with mud and debris. Looking at it, I could only imagine the force of the flood,” he said, adding that tunnel searches were proving to be challenging because of their difficult access and the absence of any empty space.

“I can only fly drones in tunnels that are long and straight,” Maharjan said. “Once there are bends, turns or zigzags, it becomes much harder to operate and search effectively.”

He reminds me of Mark Huneycutt, a YouTubing paraglider who, after the devastating floods in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene’s remnants, turned his camera into a vital reality-checking tool amid a flood of misinformation.

Amid Toxic Online Fakery Around the Helene Flood Catastrophe, a Homegrown Videographer Chronicles Reality

Do what you can where you are with the skills and tools you have.

Here’s the August 31 post on the human cost of power in Nepal’s Himalayan dam boom:

Sources: Nepal News, left, Nepal Army video, right

This post is about a huge, and predicted, factor contributing to the losses in the catastrophic Himalayan rock and ice collapse and flood and debris flow: the hydropower boom in Nepal (and elsewhere in this region that constitutes the world’s tallest water tower). First here’s the latest relevant news.

A core focus of Nepal’s frantic efforts to find survivors of the catastrophe is the many devastated or buried dams and hydroelectric power facilities — both operating and under construction. See this August 30 tweet by the Prime Minister’s office:

The Associated Press has a fresh update today:

A private-sector association representing power companies said at least 900 workers were unaccounted for at 12 hydropower projects damaged by the flash floods in Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts.

About 500 of those workers were believed to be trapped in tunnels. At least one expert said that some workers could have access to oxygen, but others warned that the chances of finding survivors were diminishing.

Nepal Army video

Alex Travelli, a New York Times business correspondent in New Delhi, filed an overview of the dam-building boom in Nepal, much of which is aimed at exporting surplus power to electricity-hungry India: “Catastrophic Flood Exposes the Risks of Nepal’s Hydropower Bet.”

…The floods in the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys damaged or destroyed 14 hydroelectric projects, including six under construction. After the deluge on Wednesday, 431 megawatts of generating capacity had gone dark, according to the Nepal Electricity Authority — more than 12 percent of the country’s total capacity….

But the loss of so much hydropower infrastructure also exposed a vulnerability at the heart of Nepal’s economic development strategy. The country is betting heavily on the rivers plunging from the Himalayas to turn itself into a major producer and exporter of renewable electricity. Companies from India, China and elsewhere have rushed into the sector in recent years. [Read the rest]

And that takes us back to May 25, 2015, when I was still writing my Dot Earth blog at The New York Times and posted a guest essay warning of the risk created by building hydro power and other energy infrastructure in unstable Himalayan landscapes. The prescient headline says it all: One-Two Punch of Earthquakes and Landslides Exposes Hydropower Vulnerability in Nepal.

The piece had two authors: Gagan Kumar Tharpa, who was then a Member of Parliament and chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Natural Resources and is now the president of Nepal’s Congress Party; and Kashish Das Threstha, a writer and advisor on environmental policy based in Nepal at the time (now in the United States).

Here’s an excerpt and link to the rest:

Nepal faces a host of pressing challenges in the aftermath of the disastrous 7.8-magnitude earthquake on April 25 and its many powerful aftershocks. Here, we focus on the impact on the country’s highly vulnerable energy infrastructure – which is critical to development at any time, but particularly in the wake of such a calamity.

The issue is the threat landslides pose to our electrical supply – dominated by hydroelectric dams.

Hydropower is clean and actually underutilized here, but a hydrocentric energy policy will continue to hold the nation hostage to inevitable seismic shocks.

The vulnerability was hinted at during last year’s monsoon as a devastating landslide on Aug. 2 put five hydroelectric power plants out of commission, taking 66.5 megawatts of generation out of our national grid. This loss added one and a half hours of extra daily brownouts – periods when grid managers shut down some power to avoid bigger blackouts.

Damage from a landslide in Nepal on Aug. 2, 2014, that wiped out a village and damaged several hydroelectric plants. Credit Kashish Das Shrestha

After the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck on April 25, initial reports indicated at least 19 hydro facilities were affected. This has knocked about 171 megawatts of power generation from the grid and is projected to cause at least six hours of daily load shedding during the monsoon season – Nepal’s peak power producing period.

But worse is likely in the offing. The monsoon is also our peak landslide season. This year’s big earthquake and its many powerful aftershocks, including the 7.3-magnitude tremor on May 12, have caused a string of landslides in different parts of the country, and made our many steep mountain slopes even more unstable.

Nepal is one of the 15 countries considered most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and some experts have long listed it as one of the countries most at risk from earthquakes.

The essay ends with a section on the value of distributed energy production, with solar a key focus. Solar has constraints as well, of course, but, as Bill McKibben has stressed, the growth in solar and storage is astonishing:

Surviving Trump, Thriving with Solar - an Update from Climate Action Lifer Bill McKibben

The danger to high-elevation hydro goes far beyond Nepal

Don’t forget this latest Himalayan tragedy is hardly unique. See my coverage of the February 2021 rock and ice collapse, flood and debris flow event that demolished two hydropower facilities in India’s portion of the mountain range and killed dozens of workers.

My Sustain What conversation with experts at the time went into the dangers posed by this kind of construction push in a landscape with so many interlaced hazards — and the government’s unrelenting investment in this energy path.

This initial post-disaster analysis by ICIMOD provides lots of additional details:

Understanding the Chamoli flood: Cause, process, impacts, and context of rapid infrastructure development

Some key findings (note my highlight!):

The flood was triggered by a massive rockslide just below Ronti peak, of ~22 mio m³ of rock mixed with ice and snow

The energy of the fall melted the ice creating the source of flood. This remobilized the debris and ice on the valley floor deposited by previous events, pushed the stream water and created an excessive flood wave.

Comprehensive monitoring of mountain environments is recommended

Infrastructure in the flood path, particularly hydropower projects, exacerbated the impact of the flood. Infrastructure development in fragile mountain environments should consider a sustainability framework, including environmental sustainability

Postscript: Elon Musk has been tweeting about expanding consciousness beyond Earth. I couldn’t help but ask him, while you’re extending consciousness beyond Earth, is there a chance you’re also sending anyone from the Boring Company to Nepal to try to extract the hundreds of hydropower workers entombed in the rockslide-flood debris? I’m still waiting to hear back.