Nepal: Worker survives ten days in flooded tunnel after deadly flood

For ten days, Sanjay Sah, 30, survived in the total darkness of a tunnel flooded by the deadly flood that hit Nepal on August 26, drinking muddy water and praying that rescuers would find him.

On September 4, when he was finally pulled out of the tube buried under the mud where he was trapped, his first question was: “How many days has it been?” “I was told that it had been ten days, I thought that only a few had passed,” the survivor told AFP, on his way back to his home in the Saptari district (south-east).

Like hundreds of other workers employed on the dam sites under construction in the far north of Nepal, on the border with China, he found himself trapped in one of the tunnels engulfed by the gigantic wave of icy water, mud and debris which swept through on August 26. The latest, still provisional, assessment of the disaster shows 1,386 dead and 5,130 missing on the Nepalese side. Sanjay Sah is one of the few who survived several days under the sea of ​​mud and rubble.

Struggling to hold back his tears, in the midst of his family and friends who gave him a warm welcome with garlands of flowers and a cake, he remembers the speed with which the waves swept away everything. “I was on duty when suddenly an unimaginable flood hit us, with waves similar to a tsunami, several meters high,” he recalls. “The workers had been warned that a flood was approaching but they did not have enough time to escape.” “We stopped everything and tried to help our friends and evacuate them,” continues the worker. But within minutes, the tunnel was submerged.

The scale of this flood, caused by the collapse of a glacier and an enormous block of rock, is unprecedented. The Nepalese government attributed it to global warming, which has accelerated the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Separated from his colleagues, Sanjay Sah found himself stuck in the tunnel, plunged in darkness, without knowing if help could reach him. “I survived thanks to my deep faith and my confidence,” he assures. “I recited the Maha Mantra (Hindu prayers) and the divine energy that I received allowed me not to be afraid or to despair,” confides the thirty-year-old.

Without drinking water, he had to make do with the little available to him. “There was water, but it was muddy,” he describes, “that’s all I had.” In his fight for survival, Sanjay Sah was able to count on the support of a fellow sufferer. Another worker, Kabir Maharjan, 45, stranded a few meters from him but alive. “We were separated but we talked to each other.” After digging tirelessly for days, rescue teams finally managed to reach the two men and free them from their trap.

Sanjay Sah's wife, Lakshmi Kumari Sah, says she always believed in this happy ending. “God helped us, we had hope,” she says, her daughter in her arms. Hospitalized for several days in Kathmandu before returning to his village, Sanjay Sah does not hide his mixed feelings about his rescue today. “I am happy, but I also feel a deep sadness,” he admits. “I was lucky to survive, as if I had been given a second life. But a lot of our friends were there.” So the worker implores the government not to stop the research. “It is still possible to find someone alive,” he wants to believe. “Or just find the bodies of my friends and return them to their families.”