How engineers from a WhatsApp group guide Nepal's flood relief efforts

A WhatsApp group of experts is leading rescue workers in Nepali valleys after a massive flash flood that occurred more than a week earlier. They are searching for survivors who might be hiding inside the tunnels of destroyed hydropower plants.

Engineers set up the messaging group before the 'wall of water, rock and mud' crashed into the Trishuli Valley in Nepal on 26 August. The messaging group has become an important tool in the search for survivors, alongside heavy machinery and helicopters.

Authorities hope that some of the 900 missing people from six hydropower plant - of which at least three were in construction - might have been able to escape the flood because they had worked or fled into tunnels.

After the flood, it is difficult to find the entrances to the tunnels that were used to channel water, or access hydropower plants.

Send me layout drawings

On Saturday, a government official asked the WhatsApp group of engineers to send him the layout drawings for the Chilime hydropower station. Rescue workers were searching the buried remains in the Himalayan Valley near the Chinese border.

A member of a group called?chat responded minutes later by sending drawings and details of the project’s powerhouse as well as access tunnels.

This exchange, as well as others posted in the group with more than 500 members were seen by.

There has been no one found alive yet in the tunnels of the 22 MW Chilime power plant or any other power plants in the valley.

The Nepal Electricity Authority official said that 46 people may be trapped in the Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Plant, which is further south.

We spoke with a dozen people, including government and army officials, engineers and survivors, as well as relatives of missing workers, who described efforts to search tunnel networks at ruined hydropower plant, including?how real time guidance was provided by experts via WhatsApp.

Raja Ram Basnet, a spokesperson for the Nepal Army, said: "The flood altered the terrain and structure of the tunnels, and mud, rocks and soil had accumulated within." This is not the normal closing of tunnels.

Images from Chilime on Monday showed flood debris rising up to the ceiling just a few feet inside a large entrance tunnel.

Last week, a collapsed glacier caused a deluge that killed more than 1,200 people. Over 4,000 people remain missing, including those trapped in tunnels.

Rescue workers are also searching for five other hydroelectric plants in the valley. These were all part of a growing network of plants that supplied electricity to the country and exported the surplus. The flood destroyed 10% of Nepal's power generation capacity.

Whatsapp: Advice on telecommunication networks

Rescue workers at Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Plant reached 250 meters into a tunnel before discovering it blocked. They haven't given up on the search.

Amshu Kiran, a member of the board of the Nepal Electricity Authority said that they were trying to get inside again in order to search for victims. He added that 46 people may have been trapped within a chamber where there was food and water.

Unnamed manager of the Nepal Electricity Authority said that rescue workers also sought advice from former employees about the tunnel network via WhatsApp group. He said that the drawings on the group were useful.

Shahi stated that rescue workers had to wait 'almost six days' before they could reach the tunnel at the Upper Trishuli 3A project because the entrance of the tunnel was buried. They also added that since then, they have tried to provide oxygen through pipes in any cavity, just in case anyone was trapped.

A photographer who flew to the site?on Thursday saw excavators trying to move huge boulders from the mouth of a tunnel and seeking their way deeper inside. A photographer flew into the site on Thursday and saw the excavators moving huge boulders out of the tunnel mouth.

Jan Jiwan Thakur is a civil engineering at Upper Trishuli 1 Plant. He said that a colleague had warned him about the flood just moments before it hit the valley. This gave him "enough time" to get to higher ground along with 100 other employees.

He said, "We ran towards the hillside, and after two or three minutes, when we looked downward, everything was gone." "The flood debris covered our entire office area."

Dhan Bahadur escaped through a tunnel in the same plant, when pipes and equipment were rushed inside by the flood. He and others were able to find a way out because they knew the tunnel system. However, he described seeing dead bodies on his journey underground.

Members of the engineers' WhatsApp group shared names and numbers of missing workers with government officials, asking them to pass on their information to telecom authorities to try to locate their last known location.

While family members wait for news about missing loved ones like Rajesh, whose son Rajish is a 30-year-old environmental engineer in Upper Trishuli 1

"Every time I look out, I see him walking home with a bag, as he always did," said Shrestha who runs an atelier that makes window grills.

"I'm surviving by the hope that he returns."

(source: Reuters)