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Tunnel rescue after floods
Two workers were rescued alive from a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydroelectric project in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, north of Kathmandu, ten days after floods hit the area on August 26.
“The rescue of Sah and Maharjan took place ten days after the catastrophe”
The survivors were identified as Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan, and Sah said, "I couldn’t simply run away alone," after spending ten days trapped in the tunnel where he described surviving by praying and calling out to other workers.
Sah told a team from the Nepal Army that he stayed in the control room warning colleagues, saying, "My responsibility was to save everyone’s life," and he added that he could keep in touch by shouting with "three or four people."
Nepali teams had heard voices coming from inside the tunnel, and deputy and engineer Ram Neupane wrote on Facebook that "human voices are heard from inside" as Nepal Army and Armed Police Force teams intensified the operation.
Death tolls diverge
While the tunnel rescue raised hopes for survivors, the overall toll from the Nepal-Tibet flash flood continued to climb, with ABC News saying the death toll had reached 1,252 and an additional 4,216 people were believed to still be missing as of Thursday at noon.
ABC News also reported that Chinese state media had reported an additional death toll of 16 and 546 missing persons in Tibet, bringing the total death toll to 1,268 and the number of missing people on both sides of the border to 4,762.
In a separate tally, Global Times said Nepal Police reported the death toll from the mudslide on Aug. 26 had risen to 1,118, with 4,858 people still missing.
Al Jazeera reported that more than 1,280 people had been killed and over 5,600 were still missing on both sides of the China-Nepal border, and it quoted Sanjay Kc of the Nepalese army engineering department saying, "We still hope there are some survivors inside."
What comes next
Rescue efforts continued to focus on hydropower tunnels and the wider search for missing people, with Al Jazeera describing that hundreds of workers were believed to be trapped inside hydropower plants, including some in tunnels, near Nepal’s border with China.
“"Every day I come here hoping to find my father,"”
Al Jazeera said Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority reported 1,252 bodies had been recovered, and it quoted Dharma Raj Upreti of the NDRRMA telling Reuters that about 20,000 houses would have to be rebuilt, including 7,500 that have been destroyed.
The same Al Jazeera report said families of those missing were gathering each morning in Kathmandu hoping for news, and it included Pratik Rana’s account: "Every day I come here hoping to find my father."
In parallel, 20Minutos reported that the operation was part of the wide search effort deployed after floods and landslides that hit Nepal on August 26 and left hundreds dead and thousands missing, while emergency teams continued searching for other people believed to remain inside the tunnel complex.