Rescuers in Nepal pulled two hydropower workers alive from a mud-filled Trishuli 3A tunnel Friday, nine days after catastrophic flash floods killed more than 1,200 people. The dramatic survivals have raised urgent hopes that dozens more trapped workers might still be found inside the complex underground system.
The Dramatic Rescue at Trishuli 3A After Nine Days
Emergency teams located and extracted two survivors from the buried Trishuli 3A construction site Friday morning after hearing voices echoing from deep within the debris-choked tunnels, as CBS News reported. The men were identified as 45-year-old Kabir Maharjan, a mechanical supervisor at the project, and 30-year-old Sanjay Shah, a mechanical foreman with the Nepal Electricity Authority, according to Nepal’s Home Minister Sudan Gurung. Both survivors suffered injuries to their arms and legs, likely sustained while crawling through the flooded subterranean structure, and were promptly airlifted to hospitals in Kathmandu for medical care.
Television broadcasts captured striking footage of the first worker being carried out on a rescuer’s shoulder, caked in mud, while the second man was wheeled away on an orange stretcher with his hands pressed together in prayer. Nepal Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal told reporters in a text message that he was thrilled
about the double rescue, while Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha declared in a public statement that as long as there is breath, there is hope, according to NDTV.
Inside the Flooded Underground Labyrinth and the Decision to Stay
The scale of the underground disaster comes into sharper focus when examining the layout of the Trishuli 3A facility, which features an underground powerhouse fed by a tunnel stretching more than 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long. A Nepali energy adviser explained that the infrastructure is not merely a single tube into the bedrock along the Trishuli River, but rather an intricate system of rooms and chambers snaking up and down where teams were caught off guard on August 26 when a mountain wall gave way following a massive glacial and rock collapse on the China-Nepal border.
For mechanical foreman Sanjay Shah, survival meant making a choice to prioritize his colleagues over his own escape when the disaster struck.
I was in the control room in the tunnel. Normally there are four to six people there, but there could have been 40 to 45 people that day. My responsibility was to save everyone’s lives. When there was such a big accident, it was not right for me to run away. Sanjay Shah, mechanical foreman
Sah warned coworkers upstream the moment word of the disaster arrived, but by the time he attempted to flee himself, the floodwaters had already cut off his escape route.
Families Express Gratitude as Wider Search Operations Continue
Outside the medical facilities, families of the rescued men spoke of their overwhelming relief after more than a week of agonizing uncertainty.
Amir Maharjan, brother of rescued worker Kabir Maharjan, stated via The Associated Press that he could not explain what they were feeling at that moment and that they were simply grateful to God.
Now we are all happy.
We are even crying.
Despite the joy of Friday’s extractions, the broader humanitarian crisis remains staggering. According to the country’s disaster management agency, the catastrophic flooding has claimed at least 1,287 lives in Nepal, with more than 5,000 people still unaccounted for. Across a dozen different hydropower projects in the region, local authorities estimate that roughly 900 workers remain missing, including an estimated 500 believed trapped inside various blocked tunnels. The Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal reports that 557 workers are missing from the Trishuli 3A project alone, with approximately 115 still trapped in its main tunnel network. Rescue operations involving pumped oxygen and ongoing structural clearance continue across all affected sites.
