Hope is a strange thing. When flash floods tore through the mountainous terrain along the Nepal-Tibet border, sweeping away entire communities and filling subterranean infrastructure with millions of tons of debris, logic said that anyone trapped underground was already gone. Yet, nine days later, rescue teams at the Trishuli 3A hydropower project pulled two men alive from a depth of 170 metres.
Sanjay Shah, a mechanical foreman, and Kabir Maharjan, a project supervisor, emerged covered in thick grey mud. They were exhausted, disoriented, but breathing. Their extraction shattered a week of agonizing despair and proved that survival in extreme conditions often hinges on sheer willpower and unpredictable pockets of air.
Inside the Chaos When the Waters Hit
The disaster struck on August 26, triggered by catastrophic flash floods that authorities attribute to a glacier collapse. Millions of gallons of water, mixed with massive boulders and dense silt, surged down river valleys.
Sanjay Shah was stationed in the project control room alongside roughly 40 to 45 workers when the initial warning signs appeared. Realizing the immense danger, he spent crucial minutes rushing through the subterranean passages to alert others, urging them to flee toward safety. That delay cost him his own escape route.
The rushing torrent blocked entrances, sealed off internal chambers, and packed mud deep into the intricate network of tunnels. Most people assume that being trapped in a collapsed tunnel means instant suffocation or drowning. In reality, modern hydropower systems feature complex labyrinths of secondary chambers, ventilation shafts, and utility rooms. These structures can create isolated dry pockets where oxygen remains trapped, allowing individuals to endure if they can withstand the psychological terror of total darkness.
The Long Days in Total Darkness
Surviving more than a week without external food or water pushes the absolute limits of human endurance. Down in the pitch-black void, time loses all meaning.
To keep panic at bay, Sanjay spent his endless hours chanting mantras. Nearby, muffled shouts echoed through the damp concrete corridors. He realized he wasn't entirely alone, communicating intermittently by voice with three or four other workers who were trapped in adjacent sections of the subterranean system.
Families above ground spent those nine days navigating a bureaucratic nightmare of uncertainty. Relatives ran between ministries and disaster response headquarters in Kathmandu, pleading for faster search efforts. Search operations faced severe logistical roadblocks. Remote Himalayan terrain, washed-out roads, and unstable slopes meant heavy machinery took days just to reach the project sites.
Rescue teams from the Nepal Army, alongside specialized international personnel, had to manually claw through dense blockages. At the Trishuli facility, it took workers nearly six days just to locate the primary tunnel entrances buried under layers of mud.
The Moment of Breakthrough
The breakthrough came when rescue crews detected faint human sounds originating from deep within the infrastructure. A joint team of elite rescue personnel crawled roughly 10 to 15 metres through cramped, debris-choked gaps to reach the inner core.
When Sanjay was finally brought out into the daylight, his first words to the army officers holding him were simple and disoriented: "What day is it?"
Covered in grime and carried on the shoulders of exhausted rescuers, he was immediately airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu alongside Kabir Maharjan. Medical staff reported both men were in stable condition, though grappling with severe physical exhaustion and the heavy shock of their ordeal.
The Reality Behind the Operation
While these two rescues brought an emotional wave of relief, the broader crisis remains staggering. Local authorities report that roughly 900 workers remain missing across a dozen different hydropower projects in the region, with an estimated 500 still believed to be trapped inside underground tunnels.
The disaster has exposed critical vulnerabilities in regional disaster response frameworks. Disaster management experts note that remote geography, combined with a shortage of specialized heavy extraction technology and rapid-deployment subterranean rescue units, severely delayed the initial response windows.
Search operations are continuing around the clock. Rescuers refuse to halt excavation efforts as long as there is any mathematical possibility that other dry chambers might harbor survivors. Specialized teams continue using acoustic sensors and micro-cameras to probe blocked shafts across the Trishuli and Rasuwagadhi project sites.
For families waiting behind police barricades, the survival of Sanjay and Kabir provides a fragile thread of optimism in an otherwise devastating national tragedy. Emergency coordination centers continue to log missing persons reports while directing heavy equipment operators to clear the remaining blocked subterranean arteries.
