By Nicoco Chan and Tingshu Wang
GYIRONG, China, Sept 6 (Reuters) – About 20 Chinese rescue workers in bright orange operated excavators, shovels and ground-penetrating radar detectors on Sunday in an effort to find hundreds of people missing since a tsunami-like mudslide destroyed China’s main border crossing with Nepal.
The Gyirong border crossing separating China’s Tibet and Nepal became a grisly emblem of the devastation that followed the collapse of a glacier on the Nepal side of the border on August 26.
Reuters and other news agencies visited the land port, which sits in a narrow river gorge, in the first trip organized for foreign media by China’s foreign ministry.
There was no trace of the five-storey Chinese customs building that had stood at the border before the disaster, video and pictures from the scene showed. The only structure still visible from before the mudslide was a portion of a nearby water tower installation.
Workers had placed a Chinese flag at the spot where the border gate, at nearly 20-meters-tall, once stood.
Behind hazard signs that read “Danger Area Pass Quickly”, three groups of about 20 rescue and recovery workers dug the earth using shovels while several red excavators stood by on Sunday afternoon.
COMPLICATED OPERATION
Rescue workers have divided the search area into seven zones, officials told Reuters. They have completed searches in four of them, with three remaining.
The mudslide has killed more than 1,300 people on both sides of the border, with more than 5,000 missing. On Saturday, emergency crews in Nepal rescued a Chinese worker who had been in a tunnel linked to a hydropower station.
On China’s side of the border, 31 people had been confirmed dead while 531 others were still classified as missing as of Friday. Among those still unaccounted for are 261 foreigners from 23 countries, Chinese officials have said.
Gyirong County sits at an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, though the port itself lies lower, at around 1,800 meters. The risk of landslides, poor weather and deep mud has further complicated rescue and recovery efforts.
The only land route into Gyirong was restored by Wednesday morning, allowing China to bring in heavy equipment to aid recovery and eventual rebuilding.
State media has shown workers restoring power to the area by sinking temporary electric poles to reconnect it to the grid.
HINDU PILGRIMAGE SITE
Gyirong has emerged as the main border crossing for travelers and trade between Nepal and Tibet over the past decade, after a 2015 earthquake in Nepal badly damaged an alternative crossing farther east.
The port was shut down between July last year and January because of an earlier glacial flood. In addition to a shipment point to Nepal for Chinese goods, including electric cars, it had also become a crossing point for thousands of Hindu pilgrims in recent years.
Many Hindus travel through Nepal to Mount Kailash, a high-altitude site in Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists. Hindus believe it to be the eternal home of Lord Shiva and his wife Parvati.
Many of the foreign nationals still missing in Tibet were pilgrims with extended families in India, diplomats in Beijing have said. There are 49 Indian citizens among the missing.
(Writing by Mei Mei Chu and Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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