Two Workers Pulled Alive From Nepal Tunnel After Nine Days
Foreman Sanjay Shah and supervisor Kabir Maharjan were rescued from 170 metres inside the Trishuli 3A hydropower tunnel, nine days after the floods. Mr Shah’s first question: “What day is it?” He had stayed to warn colleagues — “I couldn’t just run away by myself. I had to save everyone” — survived chanting mantras in the dark, and reported hearing “three or four” other voices. Around 900 workers remain missing across twelve projects; officials believe 46 at Rasuwagadhi may yet be alive in an underground chamber.
Nine days is beyond the textbook survival window, which is precisely why this rescue reorganises the entire operation: every tunnel that has not yet been pumped, blasted or reached now holds a live possibility rather than a recovery task, and the “three or four voices” Mr Shah reports hearing will send crews back into galleries they had triaged away. His account also confirms what engineers hoped about the geometry — control rooms and high galleries held air pockets when the surge came. The bleakness sits alongside: a man who stayed to empty the control room is alive, while forty of those he warned are not accounted for. Rescue mathematics are now a race between oxygen, infection — Mr Maharjan is critical and jaundiced — and the monsoon’s next instalment. Watch Rasuwagadhi’s chamber; 46 lives ride on one pumping operation.