“Two workers in Nepal were pulled out alive from a hydropower tunnel Friday, nine days after devastating floods swept the Himalayan region and left thousands of people dead” and many missing, reports NBC News.
Nepal is a country famous for having the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, which is 29,032 feet high. Half of the world’s mountains taller than 25,000 feet are in Nepal.
Emergency teams rescued a 30-year-old mechanical foreman, Sanjay Sah, and a 45-year-old mechanical supervisor, Kabir Maharjan. The voices of other trapped workers could be heard inside the tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant along the Trishuli River in Nepal’s border district of Rasuwa. 600 workers are still missing there, including at least 115 trapped in the main tunnel.
The mechanical foreman, Sah, spent his days trapped underground “chanting mantras” to give himself hope while hearing many other trapped workers calling out for help.
Sah said his “primary job duty” was to safeguard the 50 people in the tunnel at the time of the incident.
“I made sure to evacuate everyone else, but I didn’t get the chance to escape myself,” he said in the hospital he was taken to for his injuries. There were initially other survivors on his side of the tunnel. But most have likely died waiting to be rescued. And there were many other workers on the powerhouse side of the tunnel “who didn’t make it out in time.”
“Nepal’s army released images of the dramatic rescue on its official Facebook page, including one showing the first rescued worker covered in mud and being carried from the site on a rescuer’s shoulder.”
Both men were flown to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city, for treatment.
“I can’t explain what we are feeling at the moment. We are just grateful to God,” said Amir Maharjan, the brother of one of the rescued workers.
Nepal’s General Raja Ram Basnet said one of the survivors told rescuers that more people were still alive inside the tunnel.
“We are waiting for the rescue of more and more people,” said Communication Minister Bikram Timilsina.
NBC adds:
More than 900 workers are missing from about a dozen hydropower projects in Nepal, with roughly 500 believed to be trapped in tunnels, according to local officials.
Rescuers have been struggling to access the hydropower projects, many of which are in remote, mountainous areas, with bad weather adding to the difficulties. The flooding damaged roads and collapsed sections of tunnels, filling them with mud and other debris and blocking some entrances.
Aided by foreign experts, rescue teams have been working around the clock using controlled blasts, excavators and earth-moving equipment to try to reach the trapped workers amid concerns about air quality in the tunnels and the workers’ access to drinking water.
Nepal’s tiger population has grown 355%.
A former rapper defeated a communist in this year’s election in Nepal, becoming its new prime minister.
More than 6,000 people died in a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Venezuela in June. At least 300 died in a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Colombia.
Last year, at least 120 people died in an earthquake in Tibet.
Dozens of people were killed in an earthquake in Northern Afghanistan in November.
Last year, an earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed over 1,000 people.
