Rescuers pull two survivors alive 10 days after Nepal glacial floods

Survivors pulled from tunnel and mud-buried home

Emergency crews in Nepal pulled two survivors from disaster debris on 5 September, 10 days after a glacial collapse triggered flash floods across Himalayan valleys. In Rasuwa district, north of the capital, Kathmandu, a joint team of Nepali soldiers and South Korean disaster specialists extricated 49-year-old Chinese worker Lu Haitao from a 225-metre tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower facility. Rescuers carried Lu out of the tunnel and evacuated him by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu, where medical staff reported him in stable condition with mild hypothermia. On the same day in neighbouring Nuwakot district, Nepal's Armed Police Force found 64-year-old Chandika Kumari Shrestha alive on the fourth floor of her house. Rescuers provided Shrestha with water and pulled her from the sludge, which had buried the lower floors of the building, before airlifting her to Kathmandu.

Survival inside the Upper Trishuli-1 project

Lu, a former farmer and carpenter from Henan province who moved to Nepal for work in February, had climbed to an elevated point inside the tunnel after floodwaters entered the complex. His cousin, Lu Haiqing, had searched for news daily using artificial intelligence translation tools after learning on the sixth day after the disaster that he was missing. Speaking to Chinese state television and embassy staff, Lu recounted shouting toward torchlights during earlier search attempts without being heard by crews above the water level.

When they shone before my eyes, I no longer shouted. I had lost hope.

Lu's family in Henan had tracked news through mutual aid groups for relatives of the missing before receiving confirmation of his recovery. His sister, Lu Hairong, told Chinese state media about the moment she confirmed his identity from photographs.

It's a stroke of sheer luck amid the misfortune.

Rescue operations and hydropower tunnel searches

The recoveries of Lu and Shrestha mark the third and fourth living survivors located across the disaster zone within two days. On 4 September, rescue teams freed two Nepali workers from another damaged hydro-station along the Trishuli River. Search efforts have concentrated heavily on a dozen hydropower facilities where roughly 900 workers remain unaccounted for, including approximately 500 people believed to be trapped inside underground tunnels. Specialist search teams from Nepal, South Korea, India, China, and the United States continue to inspect damaged infrastructure despite rainfall in Rasuwa district, though experts state that survival chances in the flooded tunnels diminish with each passing day.

Toll and scale of Himalayan devastation

The disaster began on 26 August when a massive glacier and rock collapse sent torrents of water, rock, and ice down river valleys, destroying more than 40 bridges and disrupting transport networks. Nepal's disaster management agencies report death tolls between 1,331 and 1,375 people across the country, with missing person counts ranging from nearly 4,900 to about 5,000, including 589 foreign nationals. Across the northern border in Tibet, Chinese authorities have recorded 31 fatalities and 531 missing residents. Relief coordinators note that search windows are narrowing as flood debris hardens and access to remote mountain sites remains restricted by damaged river crossings.