(Reuters) – Rescue teams pulled two survivors from a tunnel connected to a hydroelectric plant on the Trishuli River in Nepal on Friday, nine days after a wave of ice, rock and mud swept the valley, killing more than 1,300 people and leaving more than 5,600 missing.
Authorities and rescue teams believe that the glacier collapse, which occurred on August 26 in the upper part of the river, left at least 900 people trapped in tunnels linked to six hydroelectric projects along the watershed.
The two workers pulled from the tunnel at the Upper Trishuli 3A Hydroelectric Plant are the first to be rescued from the hydroelectric projects and were taken to an Army hospital in the capital, Kathmandu, giving the search teams a glimmer of hope as the possibility of finding other survivors fades.
Videos released by Nepalese authorities showed Kabir Maharjan being hoisted from a hole in the ground as spectators applauded, and then placed on a stretcher. His colleague Sanjay Sah was carried out on the back of a worker, his face still covered in mud, before Army doctors placed an oxygen mask on him and checked his vital signs inside a rescue tent.
Sah, a mechanical foreman, later described how he stayed behind in a control room to help others escape, after urging his colleagues to flee when he heard the news of the disaster.
“I was in the control room, so my responsibility was to save the lives of everyone. When such a serious accident occurred, it wasn’t right for me to run away,” he said in a video recording shared by the Nepalese authorities.
Sah told rescue teams that he spent some time reciting mantras (verses from a prayer) while trapped. He said he had kept in contact with three or four more people in the tunnel, while others could still be alive in deeper sections of the tunnel.
At least 1,287 people died in Nepal in the floods that devastated homes, streets and schools in towns and villages near the border with Tibet, China, the disaster-management authority said on Friday. More than 5,080 are still missing.
China estimated the death toll in Tibet at 21, with another 541 people listed as missing.
