Nepal lists 933 hydropower workers missing as recovered bodies pile up downstream

Nepal's disaster authority raised the death toll to 626 and the missing list to 2,426 in its 10 a.m. bulletin on Saturday, three days after a wall of water and debris came down the Bhote Koshi from Tibet. Nepal Police had logged 616 bodies by 6 a.m. Across the border, Xinhua reported seven dead and 554 missing in Tibet. Combined, the missing count is close to 3,000.

The Independent Power Producers' Association, Nepal, counts 933 to 934 hydropower workers unaccounted for across 11 projects. That number was added to a list that already held trekkers and Kailash-Mansarovar pilgrims. Of the 2,426 missing in Nepal, 517 are foreign nationals. About 90 Americans remain unaccounted for, according to the U.S. State Department, which says three citizens have been rescued and that it is not aware of any American deaths.

The bodies are not where the flood began

Rasuwa, the district where the surge entered Nepal at Rasuwagadhi, accounts for 13 of the bodies recovered by Saturday morning. Chitwan, far down the Narayani system, accounts for 233. Nawalparasi East has 158, Gorkha 48, Nawalparasi West 47, Dhading 45, Nuwakot 41, Tanahun 31. India has pulled seven bodies from rivers that drain out of Nepal.

That distribution is the fact that should change how the search is described. The flood started in a gorge on the border. The dead are being found on the plains. A body that reaches Chitwan has travelled the length of the Trisuli-Narayani corridor. Identification will depend on DNA. Foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Reuters that Kathmandu wants help with tunnel rescues, DNA testing and long-term storage of bodies, and that it does not want general search-and-rescue teams from abroad. Britain, India, China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have all offered teams, the Kathmandu Post reported.

Teej is off, the lakes are not empty

The government cancelled official Teej programmes. Civil servants have been asked to give a month's salary to the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund, which took in Rs 1.918 billion in 36 hours and held about Rs 4.09 billion. Finance minister Swarnim Wagle put reconstruction at $4 billion to $5 billion, about a tenth of the economy.

The disaster agency said the risk of further flooding lasts until two lakes created by the event have drained. Poor weather has already interrupted helicopter sorties. The Red Cross put the affected population as high as 93,000. Rescuers have brought 4,451 people out, 129 of them foreigners.

What Saturday changes

Friday's public picture was pilgrims and trekkers. Saturday's picture is industrial. Almost a thousand hydropower workers are on the missing list because the same river system that carries pilgrims also carries the tunnels, intakes and camps of a generation of Himalayan projects. A search that treats the disaster as a tourism event will miss the camps. A search that waits for Rasuwa to produce bodies will miss Chitwan.

Khanal's request is specific: people who can work inside flooded tunnels, labs that can run DNA at volume, and cold storage that does not fail in August. Those are the constraints. The 626 dead and the 2,426 missing are the current counts. Both will move.