Ten days after catastrophic flash floods triggered by a glacier collapse devastated the Nepal-China border, rescue workers pulled a Chinese national alive from a buried hydropower tunnel in Rasuwa district. The survivor’s rescue brings a rare moment of relief as search operations continue for thousands still missing across the region.
Luhaitao Rescued from Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project
The disaster, which struck on August 26, wiped out vital infrastructure and devastated communities across the Himalayan valley. While the official combined death toll in Nepal and Tibet has climbed past 1,300, rescuers in Nepal pulled a Chinese national alive on Saturday from 225 metres inside a tunnel of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project. The survivor, identified as Luhaitao, was evacuated by helicopter following a joint operation involving the Nepal Army and foreign experts after 10 days trapped underground. A picture of the rescue published on the army’s Facebook page shows the man, identified only as Luhaitao, with his arms around the shoulders of two camouflage-clad rescuers, looking alert but with hands covered in thick, slimy mud. His health is currently being assessed and further search and rescue operations are continuing,
the army said. The survivor was among hundreds of hydropower workers who went missing since a tsunami-like wall of water and mud swept through the China-Nepal border following a vast glacial and rock collapse on August 26.
Rescuers carried out Lu from a 225-meter (740-foot) hydropower tunnel and evacuated him by helicopter Saturday, 10 days after the floods. He was taken to a hospital and was in stable condition, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. Lu recalled climbing to the highest point inside the tunnel and thinking the whistles he heard from the rescue crews were in his imagination, according to audio shared by CCTV. He told a Chinese embassy staffer that the emergency personnel initially could not hear him when he shouted toward their lights. When they shone before my eyes, I couldn’t believe it,
he said. I no longer shouted. I had lost hope.
Lu Hairong, Lu’s sister in China, told state media Red Star News that she received a call about the rescue before the news emerged, but she only found it believable after seeing him in a picture in the news. Her 49-year-old brother, who is married with a son, was previously a farmer.
WhatsApp Guidance and Tunnel Rescues in the Trishuli Valley
Trishuli 3A Tunnel Survivors Found After Nine Days
The rescue of Luhaitao followed the extraction of two Nepali hydropower workers from the Trishuli 3A tunnel on Friday. Two people were brought out alive from a tunnel linked to the Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower plant on Friday, nine days after the disaster, with one of them saying there could be more survivors in the tunnel. Those discoveries offered a fragile thread of hope for relatives searching for workers reported missing from six hydropower plants—at least three of which were under construction—as authorities hoped some of the about 900 people reported missing from these plants may have escaped the deluge because they worked in or fled into the tunnels. An army of experts in a WhatsApp group is guiding rescue workers scouring a Nepali valley after a huge flash flood more than a week ago as they desperately search for anyone who may be alive inside tunnels of devastated hydropower plants. The messaging group was set up by engineers before the wall of water, mud and rock crashed down the Trishuli valley in Nepal on August 26, and has since become a valuable tool alongside helicopters and heavy machinery in the race to find survivors.
Relief in China and Agonizing Uncertainty in Kathmandu
Nuwakot Relief Centers Receive Flood Survivors and Evacuees
So far, 1,344 bodies have been recovered in Nepal, according to the national disaster agency, with around 5,000 people missing, while the Aug. 26 floods were likely caused by a glacier collapse and nearly 4,900 remain missing in the South Asian country. In Nuwakot, one of the Nepali districts devastated by the floods, helicopters arrived loaded with boxes and bags of aid, including clothes, instant noodles, crackers and rice, while others returned from the flood-hit areas carrying survivors. An older man was carefully helped off one helicopter, while a soldier carried an older woman on his back to a medical tent, and about a dozen people emerged from another helicopter as soldiers carried several babies who had been evacuated. More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far, and at relief centers, families of missing people waited anxiously for news of their loved ones as the death toll and the number of people unaccounted for continued to rise.
Medical Realities of Prolonged Entrapment
Medical Realities of Prolonged Entrapment
Two people rescued from a hydropower tunnel nine days after Nepal’s devastating floods highlight a part of survival: what prolonged entrapment does to the body and mind. For nine days, two men sat in the dark inside a hydropower tunnel in Nepal, not knowing if anyone was coming, with no food, no clean water, and no way to tell if it was morning or midnight outside. The August 26 floods that tore through several villages along Nepal’s Tibetan border have killed more than 1,200 people, with thousands still unaccounted for, but even for those who survive and are rescued, the ordeal may not end when they are brought out. Prolonged entrapment can leave the body severely dehydrated and exhausted, while the psychological impact of being trapped, isolated and unsure whether help will arrive can emerge days or even weeks later.
