Ten days after devastating floods struck Nepal, a 49-year-old Chinese worker was rescued from a hydropower tunnel on Saturday, September 5, 2026. Lu Haitao was pulled to safety by rescue crews and transported to a hospital in stable condition, bringing profound relief to his anxious family in China.
What began as a desperate search across international borders turned into an extraordinary rescue operation in Nepal’s rugged terrain. Devastating floods, which authorities indicate were likely triggered by a glacier collapse, swept through the region on August 26, leaving a catastrophic death toll and thousands unaccounted for. Amid the unfolding humanitarian crisis, rescue workers zeroed in on vulnerable infrastructure projects, ultimately locating survivors trapped deep within industrial tunnels days after the disaster struck.
Inside the Trishuli Hydropower Tunnel Rescue
The operation to extract Lu Haitao unfolded inside a 225-meter (740-foot) hydropower tunnel, according to details reported by international news agencies. Joint rescue teams comprising Nepalese military personnel and South Korean disaster experts executed the extraction, bringing the total number of workers pulled alive from the Trishuli hydropower project to three, following the earlier rescue of two Nepalese workers from a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A plant.
Trapped in the pitch-black subterranean space for more than a week, Lu climbed to the highest point he could reach inside the tunnel. When emergency personnel approached, he initially struggled to make himself heard over the subterranean acoustics.
Lu told a Chinese embassy staffer that he thought the rescue whistles he heard were merely a product of his imagination according to broadcast audio shared by state media. Having lost hope of being found, he had stopped shouting toward the searchlights before rescuers finally located him. Following his extraction, an army medic monitored his condition during a helicopter evacuation, and Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that he was resting in stable condition at a hospital.
Anxious Waiting and AI-Driven Searches Across Borders
Thousands of miles away in China, Lu’s family endured an agonizing ten-day wait filled with fragmented updates and sleepless nights. Lu Hairong, his sister, learned of the rescue from an advance phone call before seeing a photograph of her brother published in the news. She explained that her 49-year-old brother, a farmer from Henan province who took on carpentry work during his spare time, had traveled to Nepal for work in February in what was his first time working abroad.
Because Lu had not shared his precise working location before the disaster, his family relied entirely on mutual aid groups for the missing. Lu’s cousin, Lu Haiqing, described experiencing a complete mental blank upon learning of his disappearance on the sixth day after the floods. To bridge the language barrier, she used artificial intelligence tools to translate Nepali news reports into Chinese every day while weeping on her way to work.
There is hope when one doesn't give up,
she added after finally receiving a photograph from Lu’s sister to help confirm his identity.
Broader Scale of the Disaster and International Response
The rescue of Lu Haitao and two Nepalese workers unfolded against the backdrop of an immense regional catastrophe. Nepal’s disaster management agency reports that the August 26 floods killed more than 1,300 people, with nearly 4,900 individuals remaining missing. Search operations have concentrated heavily on 12 hydropower projects across the country, where approximately 900 workers remain unaccounted for, and roughly 500 are believed to be trapped inside various tunnels.
Specialized response units from India, China, South Korea, and the United States have deployed to comb through debris and damaged structures. In a separate operation on Saturday in the flood-affected town of Nuwakot, the Nepal Army spokesperson announced that a woman was pulled alive from the rubble of a house, covered in mud, before being given bottled water, wrapped in a gray blanket, and airlifted to Kathmandu.
Across the border on the Tibet side, the crisis has exacted a heavy toll as well. CCTV reported that 43 people died and 519 remained missing in Tibet, where excavators cleared debris at the Gyirong border facility after a mudslide swallowed victims. In those disaster zones, recovery workers and families have left yellow chrysanthemums among rock fragments as tributes to those who perished.
