The work was always dangerous, demanding long hours digging tunnels in a region prone to natural disasters.
But Nepal’s hydroelectric industry attracted poor laborers and highly trained engineers alike, as investments poured in from across Asia.
Now, hundreds of workers are missing after a deadly flood tore through 14 hydropower projects concentrated along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli Rivers, near Nepal’s border with Tibet.
As counts of the dead and missing continue to grow, over 900 people from the hydropower projects are unaccounted for, according to Nepal’s disaster relief agency, bringing the total number of missing people to over 1,900.
Videos have shown rescuers pulling survivors from thick mud that filled hydropower tunnels, and many fear that others are dead or trapped inside.
“Many engineers are probably dead,” said Dinesh Paudel, a geographer at Appalachian State University who has studied development in Nepal. He said on Friday that he had yet to hear from a friend who worked on one of the hydropower projects.
The flood on Wednesday swallowed buildings, washed away bridges and severely damaged hydropower facilities, which generate electricity as water moves rapidly downstream.
Despite the region’s susceptibility to natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods and landslides, its hydropower industry has boomed over the last decade.
Because of the region’s access to plenty of water running down steep rivers and its proximity to China, the river corridor in northern Nepal’s Rasuwa district is one of the country’s largest and most active sites of hydropower projects, drawing new workers to the rural Himalayas, experts said.
“The river has all the ingredients,” said Dr. Paudel. “And once you have hydropower in one location, it’s easier to put another. The infrastructure and roads are built.”
A handful of hydropower projects in the Rasuwa district are listed as having “under construction licenses” by Nepal’s Independent Power Producers’ Association. Dr. Paudel said construction and final testing would draw more workers to the sites.
Such sites are often built by Chinese companies and staffed by poor Nepali laborers, including many who traveled from other parts of the country without the means to seek better work abroad, Dr. Paudel said.
The job can involve maintaining and digging tunnels, often with pickaxes, said Galen Murton, a geographer at James Madison University who has studied Nepal’s infrastructure.
“There’s highly educated, sophisticated engineers,” Dr. Murton said. “It’s a diverse population.”
“But the guys doing the hardest work come from the most hardscrabble backgrounds,” he added.
The hydropower projects had brought people to northern Nepal and spun off a local economy around it, Dr. Murton said. But it’s unclear what remains of it now.
“Disasters have damaged hydropower facilities before,” Dr. Murton said. “But I can’t think of a singular event where things were there and then it was gone.”
Rebecca L. Davis contributed reporting.
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