Rescuers Pull Chinese Worker and Nepali Woman Alive From Flood Wreckage

Lu Haitao was trapped 225 metres inside a flooded hydropower tunnel in Nepal’s Rasuwa district when rescuers finally reached him. He was pulled out on Saturday by Nepali soldiers and South Korean disaster specialists, appearing stable but mildly hypothermic before a helicopter took him to a hospital in Kathmandu.

In a separate rescue nearby, teams dug 64-year-old Chandika Kumari Shrestha out of her collapsed home in neighbouring Nuwakot district. She was covered in mud and received water from rescuers before being airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment.

Both had been trapped since a glacier collapsed in the Himalayas on August 26. The collapse unleashed water, rock and ice through the valley. The two rescues came within hours of each other and were the third and fourth in recent days, renewing hope that more people missing from flooded tunnels could still be alive.

Lu told Chinese state television that he called out whenever he saw rescuers’ torchlight, but they did not hear him until a beam finally found him. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. Rain slowed the search in Rasuwa on Saturday, but rescue teams continued working.

Shrestha’s rescue followed the recovery a day earlier of two Nepali tunnel workers from a nearby hydropower site. They were the first survivors found at any of the region’s damaged plants.

Nepal’s national disaster authority put the country’s death toll at at least 1,331 and said about 5,000 people remained missing, including 589 foreign nationals. Across the border in China’s autonomous Tibet region, officials reported 31 deaths and 531 missing people.

About 900 workers remained unaccounted for at hydropower construction sites alone. Roughly 500 were believed to be trapped inside tunnels at a dozen projects damaged by the floodwaters. Search teams from India, China, South Korea and the United States joined the operation.

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I couldn’t believe it.