Nepal Floods: Ziplines Rescue Residents After Bridges Fail

Rescue crews in Nepal have turned to cable cars and ziplines to move stranded residents across raging rivers after deadly floods and mudslides in August swept away local bridges.

Video from the affected areas shows teams pulling on ropes to carry people from an embankment cut off by floodwaters. In one clip from Nuwakot, Nepal, two people can be seen seated inside a small box suspended from a wire as workers haul them across the river to a platform on the opposite side.

The emergency crossings are part of a broader rescue effort as Nepal and neighboring China continue to confront the devastation left by the Aug. 26 mudslide and the floods that followed in Tibet’s Gyirong Valley and Nepal’s Trishuli River Valley.

By Wednesday, officials had confirmed at least 1,114 deaths in Nepal, with nearly 4,000 people still missing. Across the border, Chinese authorities have reported 16 additional deaths and at least 541 people missing.

Search and rescue teams are also continuing efforts to locate possible survivors believed to be trapped inside a hydropower tunnel in Nepal’s Rasuwa district.

“In Rasuwagadhi, we think 46 people are trapped in a room-like structure in the tunnel,” Amshu Kiran Shahi, a board member of the Nepal Electricity Authority, which operates the hydropower plant, told Reuters.

A senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration also told Fox News that an additional two Americans made it to safety in Nepal, marking 16 total Americans in the country who made their way to safety.

Seventy-five Americans in Nepal currently remain unaccounted for while no American casualties have been reported so far.

News Outlet contacted the U.S. State Department and Nepal’s Foreign Ministry for further comment.