The video from the Nepalese Army shows a man being carried out of a tunnel and across to a waiting helicopter, where medics start checking his vitals. He is a foreign national, and he came out alive on Saturday, 5 September, from the Apar Trishuli 1 hydropower tunnel. Ten days earlier, flash floods had torn through Nepal. The army posted the footage on X, according to ANI.
Nepal Police reported a second rescue the same day. A joint team from Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force pulled one woman out at Betrawati 10, Vidur, in Nuwakot District. The police also posted pictures of a temporary field hospital in Nuwakot, where a collection centre has been set up for DNA testing.
Two survivors from Friday
Saturday’s rescues followed another on Friday. Two men were brought alive from the Trishuli 3A hydropower tunnel after nine days underground. The Kathmandu Post, citing Shri Ram Neupane, a lawmaker from the Rastriya Swatantra Party, named them as Sanjay Sah, a mechanical foreman, and Kabir Maharjan, a mechanical supervisor.
The BBC reported that the flooding began on Wednesday, 26 August, when a glacier collapsed near the Nepal-Tibet border. Sah told the BBC he chanted mantras in the dark and kept in touch with three or four other workers somewhere in the tunnel. He said he had urged his colleagues to run. “It was not right for me to run away… My responsibility was to save others,” he said. Maharjan was in hospital in a critical condition. The body of a third person was recovered from the same site, and authorities said that person probably died in floodwater while trying to flee.
The BBC said at least 39 workers were believed to be still inside the Trishuli 3A tunnel, with more than 100 others in similar tunnels along the valley. Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha wrote on social media: “As long as there is breath, there is hope!”
The toll and the relief effort
ANI put the confirmed deaths at no fewer than 1,344. The BBC, reporting a day earlier, cited 1,280 dead and 4,708 missing on the Nepal side, and said Xinhua counted 31 dead and 531 missing on the Tibetan side.
The Nepalese Army and international teams are running large humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations to reach cut-off communities. In Nuwakot district, army engineers are building a rope bridge over the swollen Tadi River to reconnect areas severed from the national road network. About 20 helicopters are flying search, rescue and relief missions over Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts. Bad weather, steep terrain and a shortage of usable helipads, a result of flood damage, make each flight harder.
India is helping. An Indian tunnel rescue team has worked alongside the Nepal Army at the Chilime tunnel in Rasuwa district, draining accumulated water and digging deeper into the shaft. Indian Ambassador to Nepal Naveen Srivastava said on X that India would back Nepal with technical expertise on site and humanitarian aid for nearby communities.
Sources
- Nepal flooding: Rescuers try to reach dozens trapped in tunnel as two pulled out alive and one found dead – BBC News
- Nepal floods: Two people including foreign national rescued alive
