Rescuers pulled two men alive from a hydropower tunnel in Nepal on Saturday, nine days after a glacial collapse and rockfall on 26 August triggered floods that killed at least 1,200 to 1,375 people and left more than 5,000 missing across the Himalayan river valleys.
The rescued men, including operator Sanjay Sah, were trapped in the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project; one is in critical condition, and both were airlifted to Kathmandu. Separately, a 64-year-old Nepali woman was pulled from mud in Nuwakot. The Nepali army, joined by South Korean experts, conducted the tunnel rescue after 225 metres of drilling.
About 900 workers are missing from roughly a dozen hydropower sites, with around 500 thought to be inside tunnels; rescue teams from India, China, South Korea and the U.S. are searching, aided by engineers coordinating over a 500-member WhatsApp group sharing tunnel layouts. The disaster damaged 10% of Nepal's installed generation capacity.