How two men survived nine days inside a Nepal flood tunnel

Kabir Maharjan drifted in and out of consciousness in muddy water, in total darkness, for nine days. When rescuers finally brought him to a hospital, he did not recognise his wife and asked why she had not given him a bed sooner.

Maharjan and mechanical foreman Sanjay Sah survived inside an air-filled chamber beneath the wreckage of Nepal’s worst flood disaster in decades, according to lawmaker and veteran tunnel engineer Shri Ram Neupane, who helped lead the rescue.

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I have to go inside the tunnel. There won’t be any network inside.

The disaster began on Aug. 26, when a glacier collapsed above the Trishuli valley. The resulting wall of mud and water killed more than 1,300 people and left thousands missing across Nepal and neighbouring Tibet. Hundreds of hydropower workers were believed to have been buried, while the flood submerged a network of 12 hydropower projects with nearly 900 workers inside.

Maharjan had called his wife, Hira Shova Maharjan, at 7:30 a.m. before starting his shift at the Upper Trishuli 3A hydropower project. “I have to go inside the tunnel,” he told her. “There won’t be any network inside.” About an hour later, the glacier collapsed at Langtang Lirung mountain, about 25 miles upstream.

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Floods are normal.

In Kathmandu, electricity officials watched power stations disappear from their screens one after another. Officials initially did not sound alarmed because floods are common in Nepal, engineer Suraj Dahal said. But they soon understood the scale of the disaster. Because the 3A station manager was abroad, officials needed two extra minutes to contact about 40 workers believed to be inside. At 9:15 a.m., after Maharjan’s wife had failed to reach him, officials issued the order: “Evacuate!”

Sah ran through the power house’s control room and warned colleagues floor by floor. Workers outside the tunnels tried to escape the flood but could not outrun it. Reuters reconstructed the men’s survival and rescue through interviews with relatives, engineers, officials and rescuers, along with site documents, maps and internal communications. Their rescue has offered hope to teams searching for 121 workers still believed to be trapped in tunnels as of Sept. 7.

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Evacuate!