Ten Days in the Dark: Worker Pulled Alive From Nepal Hydropower Tunnel After Himalayan Flood Buried Hundreds
A Chinese construction worker walked back into daylight on 5 September after ten days trapped inside a hydropower tunnel in northern Nepal, one of the few confirmed survivors of a disaster that tore through Himalayan valleys on 26 August.
The Nepal Army said Lu Haitao was found about 225 metres inside a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa district. A joint team of Nepali soldiers and South Korean disaster specialists brought him out. Officials said he had no visible injuries and stable vital signs, but showed mild hypothermia. Army footage showed him exhausted and coated in dried mud as medics checked him aboard a helicopter bound for an army hospital.
He was the third person pulled alive from tunnels along the Trishuli River in two days. On 4 September, two Nepali workers — mechanical supervisor Kabir Maharjan and foreman Sanjay Sah — were rescued from a separate tunnel at the Upper Trishuli 3A station downriver. The same Saturday, soldiers also freed Chandika Kumari Shrestha from a flooded structure in Betrawati, Nuwakot.
The 26 August flood followed the collapse of ice, rock and debris on the upper reaches of the river near the Nepal–Tibet border. A wall of water and mud swept through towns, roads, schools and construction sites. Nepal’s disaster authority reported at least 1,344 dead and about 4,887 missing, including 583 foreign nationals. On the Chinese side of the border, authorities reported 31 dead and more than 500 missing.
Rescue teams have focused on hydropower works because hundreds of labourers were underground when the surge hit. Officials have said roughly 900 people may have been trapped across tunnels linked to several projects. Nepal’s hydropower boom has drawn large numbers of foreign workers; Chinese nationals form one of the largest groups on work permits.
Lu, 49, was a farmer from Henan province who had taken extra jobs as a carpenter before travelling to Nepal in February with a fellow villager — his first stint abroad. His sister in China said she only believed the rescue after seeing images of him. He is married and has a son.
Survival underground after a debris flood is rare. Tunnels can hold pockets of air even when portals are sealed by mud, but oxygen, cold, wet clothing and the risk of further collapse make each extra day dangerous. Rescuers have used drones, satellite imagery and confined-space teams because the landscape itself changed: weirs, access roads and plant buildings were buried or washed away.
At the Maithili Barrack in Nuwakot, families still pin photos of missing relatives on the walls. Krishna Poudel last spoke to his brother Ishwor, a tunnel worker at another project, on the morning of the flood. Ishwor said he was trapped. Other workers who escaped later told the family they had heard scores of voices inside. Those accounts keep search teams digging even as hope narrows.
The rescues have not changed the scale of the loss. They have, however, shown that some air pockets lasted long enough for people to be found. Operations at multiple tunnel mouths continued after Lu was flown out. For families still waiting, three living workers and one woman pulled from a ruined house are not an ending. They are a reason to keep listening for voices in the dark.
