Nepali Army calls its Bhotekoshi flood rescue 'incomparable, historic and exemplary'

The Nepali Army has ruled its own performance in the Rasuwa Bhotekoshi flood disaster "incomparable, historic, and exemplary." The verdict appears in a report the army released on September 27, one month after the August 26 flood buried roads, bridges, and hydropower tunnels along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers.

The report singles out one chapter as the hardest of the whole response: pulling survivors out of hydropower tunnels choked with mud and boulders. The army says seven people came out alive from those buried tunnels, including two rescued on September 5 after crews cut through the tunnel's arched crown to reach them. DC Nepal, OnlineKhabar and Ratopati carried the report on September 27, and Ratopati's English edition confirms the same figures and language.

The army lists the conditions its teams worked under: weather that shifted fast and without warning, narrow mountain flight corridors, too few helipads, communication lines cut, a river whose flow no one could predict, landslides that kept falling, and tunnels packed with debris. A video described by the Kathmandu Post showed one soldier pulling a trapped worker through thick mud inside a tunnel while another pushed him from behind.

A rescue measured against a heavy toll

The army's self-praise sits inside a much larger and grimmer count. By August 30, four days into the disaster, the army said it had rescued 2,697 people, 2,497 of them by helicopter including 216 foreign nationals, and the rest on foot. More than 8,300 soldiers were deployed, the army told the Kathmandu Post.

By September 26, Nepal's disaster authority, the NDRRMA, put the toll far higher across the whole flood, not just the tunnels: 1,453 dead and 5,285 still missing, according to Nepal Press. The same report says 13,795 people have been rescued overall, with more than 20,000 police, army, and armed police personnel mobilized. Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha told Parliament on September 23 that more than 800 hydropower workers alone remained unaccounted for, a figure that has come down only slowly since it topped 900 in early September, the Kathmandu Post reported. OnlineKhabar reports the army's figure of 2,798 people rescued from the hydropower area overall. The seven are those freed from tunnels later packed with mud and boulders. Seven people pulled alive from buried tunnels is a real achievement. It is also a small number next to the more than 800 hydropower workers the minister says are still unaccounted for.

Recovery still slow, a month on

Nepal Press's own reporting on the one month mark shows why "historic" success sits uneasily next to daily hardship. Road links to Rasuwa remain broken. The army has built a temporary bridge at Devighat in Nuwakot, and the roughly ten kilometre Bidur to Betrawati stretch has reopened for the most part, but the route from Devighat to Parika village still needs a tuin, a cable pulley crossing, because no bridge stands there yet. A 72 metre bailey bridge is being prepared for Betrawati. Nagarik News reported on September 26 that the collapse of Rasuwa's road network has caused food shortages and made it hard for poorer residents to reach medical treatment.

Efforts to reopen the Rasuwagadhi trade route to China before the Dashain festival are underway, led by the Department of Roads, the army, and a government task force, Ratopati reported. Until that route reopens and permanent bridges replace bailey crossings, families displaced by the flood will keep depending on temporary shelter, rented rooms, and relief deliveries that Nepal Press says are still ongoing a month after the water hit.