Two men survive nine days in the flood tunnels of Nepal

Kabir Maharjan, a delirious man, drifted in-and-out of consciousness in the darkness of a?pool muddied with water. He had been trapped in a tunnel for nine days under the wreckage caused by Nepal's worst flooding disaster in decades.

He did not recognise his wife when he woke up in a hospital, after a miraculous rescue. He asked her, confused, why she hadn't given him a place to sleep sooner.

Maharjan is believed to be one of hundreds hydropower workers who were buried by a collapsed glacier above Nepal's Trishuli Valley on August 26. The wall of mud and water unleashed killed over 1,300 people, and thousands of others are still missing in Nepal and neighboring Tibet.

Both he and the mechanical foreman Sanjay sah were able to survive in an air-filled room, according to Shri Ram Neupane. He is a veteran engineer who led the rescue effort.

The search teams that are working along the valley's devastated sites have hope because of their rescue against the odds. Some of the 121 workers believed to still be trapped in the tunnels on Monday may still be alive.

The full story has been reconstructed through interviews with 12 people. This includes the unreported accounts of relatives, engineers and government officials, as well as rescuers who were directly involved. Site documents, maps and internal conversations among rescuers have also been reviewed.

THE MORNING

Maharjan had called his wife at 7:30 am (0145 GMT) the morning of the tragedy before he started his shift at Upper Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project.

He told her, "I must go into the tunnel." There won't even be a network in the tunnel.

A glacier collapsed on the Langtang Lirung Mountain, some 25 miles downstream, causing an avalanche so powerful it flooded villages and submerged 12 hydropower plants with almost 900 workers.

On their screens, officials from the electricity department in Kathmandu monitored the power supply of the various projects. Then, the screens went blank. Stations started to disappear from the panels like dominoes.

Suraj Dahal said that he wasn't alarmed at first because "floods" are common in Nepal.

Soon, they understood that the opposite was true. It took two minutes longer to contact the estimated 40 workers inside because the 3A station manager, who was away at the time, had been called. At least two hydropower plants upriver were already affected by then.

Officials gave the order for 3A to evacuate at 9:15 am, two minutes after Maharjan’s wife, Hira-Shova Maharjan had attempted to contact him but failed.

Sah, who was in the control room of the powerhouse, ran from floor to floor warning each colleague individually, he told rescuers.

Workers attempting to escape the flood outside the tunnels were unable to do so quickly enough. Officials pointed to footage that showed a group of about 30 workers being swept away by waves many times higher than their own height.

Dahal said that rescuers found an escape ladder, which had the workers been aware of it, they could have saved up to two-thirds.

He said that they "didn’t know where to turn."

Rescuers thought that the one tunnel access route, which ran over 180 meters, was completely flooded and offered no hope of survival.

Neupane turned instead his attention to a smaller cable-duct that sloped up and was less vulnerable to floodwaters. Maharjan and Sah took shelter there, only 160 meters away from the exit - "at the corner, on the edge of tunnel", as Maharjan later described it to his spouse.

Fear of the Worst

The air pocket, which had saved their lives, became their prison for the next nine days. Sah said he recited Hindu prayer to keep his bravery. Maharjan's wife claimed that he drank the same muddy water as he did to sleep in order to remain alive.

Hira Shova assumed that the powerhouse was safe when she first heard of the flood.

She called her husband, co-workers, and anyone else who could have some information. Nobody answered.

She was shocked to see photos of the entrance, which is now a barren riverbank. "He couldn't be alive", she thought.

She recalled that "deep down in my soul, a terrible sense of hopelessness was setting into," but she maintained a brave face in front of her 15-year-old and 10-year old sons.

RACE AGAINST MOUNTAIN

Officials thought that oxygen pockets scattered throughout the wreckage could help some workers survive.

Dharamraj Uprety of Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said that with more than 7,500 homes destroyed in the valley, rescuers were forced to make tough decisions on where to dig. 3A was near the top because officials believed its multi-story structure with turbines and ventilation floor might have trapped air pockets.

Sagar Dhakal and Neupane, along with Neupane and Sagar Dhakal as well as an army helicopter, arrived at the site the day following the disaster. The debris was so saturated that heavy machinery could not be moved in right away.

"Everything that you drop there just sinks," said Prakash Pokhrel a geologist at Nepal's Disaster Management Authority.

Before any excavations could start, crews had to first build a stable surface.

Three days after the catastrophe, serious digging began. All four tunnels had been blocked by mud, rocks, timber, and debris. Some of this was buried beneath 15 to 30 meters of landslide materials. Rescuers used drilling, controlled explosions and heavy equipment to make a way forward.

The breakthrough was when a 5-inch hole drilled above confirmed the true alignment of the tunnel, giving crews an exact point to dig towards.

The rain made things worse. Rain flooded the shaft with debris and fresh water several nights in a row, undoing all of our hard work. Amshu Kiran, a member of the board of the Nepal Electricity Authority, stated that it took the rescuers six days to reach the tunnel entrance. They called for survivors but nobody responded.

The Breakthrough

Rescuers couldn't move a wall of mud clogged debris the night before they found the survivors. Dhakal’s crew used improvised methods to clear the tunnel. They tapped a natural channel 15 meters above it and forced water through with a high pressure jet.

It rained again and triggered a partial collapse, trapping several rescuers for a short time. After hours of stalling, colleagues convinced them to return inside and reinforced the passageway with metal sheets and gabion.

Dahal received a phone call at 4 am on the 10th night from a heavy-equipment operator. The rescuers heard something. A noise. A noise. Perhaps the voices of rescuers calling out into the darkness.

Ganga Baral led the rescue effort and said that they heard noises while drilling into the tunnel.

They cut the engines of their machines again and again to listen. We would shout, "Where are you?" "Are you there?" Baral said. "Sometimes, it felt as if there was someone alive trying to talk to us," Baral said.

The source of the sound was still too far away to make out any words, but now they estimated it to be only 15-20 meters away. They saw a hand in the light beam.

Between them and the survivor, they had to cross another 5-10 meters of mud. Soldiers opened a small opening at 7:00 am.

The only word that came out was "hunuhuncha", loosely translated as "we are here".

SEE THE LIGHT

Both men were unable to stand up when the rescuers finally lifted them out of the tunnel. Sah's face was caked with mud and he had to be carried on the back of a rescuer. He was able to raise one hand towards a camera. Maharjan was carried out by a stretcher with more serious injuries.

"Mummy! Papa is back!" "Mummy, Papa is back!" shouted his sons when they heard.

Dhakal wept as the two men emerged. Dhakal had never been inside the tunnel but ran the operation. "I could not hold back my tears," Dhakal said.

The Chinese national Lu Haitao, was discovered the following day in the tunnels of another station, Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project.

Maharjan’s wife reported that doctors at the hospital operated on a deep infected cut on his leg.

He did not recognize Hira Shova when she walked into the room.

He asked, "Where am i?"

She was thrilled that he had returned to life.

He is blessed with a second life.

(source: Reuters)