US team joins Chilime tunnel search as Nepal flood dead reach 1,127

A 13-member team from the U.S. group Crisis Response International reached Rasuwa district on 2 September to search hydropower tunnels at Chilime in Syabrubesi, where workers are still unaccounted for after the 26 August floods. A Singapore unit is also on the ground. Nepal Police put the death toll at 1,127. More than 4,800 people remain listed as missing on some tallies. Prime Minister Balendra Shah said 11,993 people had been rescued and 3,916 could not be reached.

Team member Ferrin Cole told ANI the group would fly by helicopter to the tunnels with listening equipment to pick up sounds of life, then send safety crews in. "The Nepali people are incredibly resilient, and they are doing an amazing job at rescues," he said. He thanked Indian search teams already on site. Colleague Derrick Spencer said an earlier party reached a tunnel mouth and stopped when it became clear they needed ropes before going farther.

Indian specialists had already set a foothold at Chilime and probed 185 metres at Langtang, Indian ambassador Naveen Srivastava said on 31 August. Earlier attempts at the 250-metre Chilime facility got about 90 metres in before chest-deep silt forced a halt. The August 26 flood tore through the Trishuli basin, wrecked roads and bridges and filled powerhouse shafts with mud.

Nepal Police listed recoveries by district: 45 in Rasuwa, 155 in Nuwakot, 59 in Dhading, 348 in Chitwan, 66 in Gorkha, 38 in Tanahun, 217 in Nawalparasi East, 190 in Nawalparasi West and nine in India. Only 95 bodies had been returned to families on an earlier official count. India has flown multiple relief aircraft, including a fifth flight with an 11-member specialist team and 5.5 tonnes of medicines. Cumulative Indian relief tonnage was put at 68.5 tonnes.

About 75 Americans were still among the missing a week after the flood, U.S. coverage said. Four Indian-origin residents of Texas dropped out of contact on a Kailash pilgrimage near Gyirong Port and in the Rasuwagadhi-Timure belt. Families in Kathmandu hospitals have been giving DNA samples to identify the dead.

The tunnel work is now an international confined-space operation: Nepali Army and Armed Police, Indian tunnel crews, a U.S. listening team, Singapore specialists and local mountain guides. The limiting factor is silt, rope access and the chance that anyone still inside has air.

Listening gear can tell a crew whether to risk another ten metres. It cannot drain a shaft. That is why Cole's sentence about resilience sits next to Spencer's sentence about ropes. Both are descriptions of the same hole in the hill.