Helicopter searches have resumed to find nine employees of Doosan Enerbility and Korea South-East Power (KOEN) who went missing in the Nepal flooding.
According to Doosan Enerbility on the 31st, at 11:03 a.m. local time (2:18 p.m. Korea time), one search helicopter took off from Kathmandu Airport for the accident site. The distance to the site is about 70 km.
The helicopter is set to conduct searches shuttling between the office area and the upper dam. The upper dam is where some of the missing Korean workers had been stationed. Roads leading to the accident site have been washed out, making ground access virtually impossible. That makes helicopter searches urgent.
However, deploying helicopters for the search requires permission from local authorities as well as suitable weather conditions. Doosan Enerbility had prepared two helicopters since on the 27th, but this is the first successful flight.
On the 29th, flight permission for the helicopters was granted, but in the morning bad weather grounded them, and in the afternoon Nepalese authorities barred foreign helicopter operations. On the 30th, no flight permission was issued. Takeoff clearance has not yet been granted for another helicopter secured by Doosan Enerbility.
Korea South-East Power (KOEN) has also leased one helicopter and applied for flight approval. The company received approval from Nepalese authorities on the 28th and conducted one search of the accident area. It has not flown since.
Doosan Enerbility is also preparing drone searches in addition to helicopter deployment. But drones likewise require local authority approval, making it hard to predict when they can be used.
◇ Doosan Group Chairman Park Jeong-won heads to Nepal as well… Doosan Enerbility and Korea South-East Power bolster manpower
Doosan Group and Korea South-East Power are reinforcing on-site response teams to ensure thorough searches. From Doosan Group, Chairman Park Jeong-won and Doosan Enerbility Chairman Park Gee-won have traveled to Nepal to oversee the situation on the ground.
Chairman Park Jeong-won and Chairman Park Gee-won departed for Nepal from Incheon International Airport at about 2:05 p.m. on the 29th. The two chairmen are said to have met the rescued employees, heard accounts of the situation at the time, and offered them comfort.
Doosan Group has also increased on-site response personnel. Doosan Enerbility on the 31st dispatched two more people to Nepal who are familiar with local conditions. With the first eight-person dispatch team and six local employees, the on-site response team has grown to 16.
Korea South-East Power on the 30th sent a second nine-person on-site response team, including acting CEO Cho Young-hyeok. Immediately after the accident on the 27th, the company dispatched a first six-person on-site response team, then urgently sent one employee from its Pakistan subsidiary, bringing the local response team to seven. They established a cooperation system with the government and other related agencies and conducted initial situation assessments.
With the additional dispatch of the second on-site response team, the total on-site response team will be expanded to 16. Including four existing local subsidiary employees, a total of 20 response personnel will support recovery and relief operations at the site.
Meanwhile, the place where nine Koreans lost contact and ten were isolated on the 26th local time is the Upper Trishuli-1 (UT-1) hydropower plant construction site, which Korea South-East Power (KOEN) and Doosan Enerbility have been building for more than five years. It is in the Rasuwa region upstream of the Trishuli River, about 70 km north of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.