Two workers who survived nine days after disaster in hydroelectric power plant tunnel in Nepal were rescued

Kabir Maharjan spent nine days in a dark tunnel in muddy water, sometimes losing consciousness and regaining consciousness. When he was rescued and taken to the hospital, he did not recognize his wife. He asked where she was, then tried to understand why she hadn't given him a bed before.

Maharjan and mechanical foreman Sanjay Sah were trapped in the tunnel of a hydroelectric power plant in the disaster that occurred on August 26 in Nepal's Trishuli Valley. The survival of the two workers was ensured by the air gap left in a section that the water could not completely fill.

The fact that they survived the disaster in Nepal and neighboring Tibet, in which more than 1,300 people died and thousands went missing, also gave hope to the teams searching in other tunnels. As of Monday, 121 workers were still believed to be trapped in the tunnels.

Reuters compiled the story of the two workers' survival and rescue through interviews with relatives, engineers, officials and rescue workers, as well as technical documents and correspondence exchanged during the operation.

Sah, who worked in the control room, ran between floors and warned his friends one by one. Some workers who were able to get out were not fast enough to escape the flood. In the images cited by the authorities, a group of approximately 30 people was seen being dragged by a wave many times their height.

An escape ladder that crews later identified could have saved two-thirds of those inside if the workers had known its location, according to Dahal.

But the workers did not know where to go.

Maharjan and Sah took shelter in a cable tunnel that was less exposed to floodwaters because it sloped upwards. They were only 160 meters from the exit. As Maharjan later told his wife, they waited "in a corner, at the edge of the tunnel."