Rescuers pull two survivors alive from Nepal flood wreckage as search continues for thousands missing

Rescuers in Nepal have pulled a Chinese hydropower worker and a Nepali woman alive from the wreckage left by catastrophic flooding, as search teams continue combing the region for thousands of people still missing.

Lu Haitao was freed on Saturday from 225 metres inside a flooded tunnel at a hydropower plant in Rasuwa district, in the mountains north of the capital, Kathmandu.

Separately, 64-year-old Chandika Kumari Shrestha was dug out of her collapsed home in the neighbouring district of Nuwakot.

Both had been trapped since a glacier collapsed in the Himalayas on August 26, unleashing a torrent of water, rock and ice that swept through the valley.

Coming within hours of each other, the rescues are the third and fourth in days, and have renewed hope that more of those still unaccounted for in the region’s flooded tunnels could be found alive.

Lu was brought out by a joint team of Nepali soldiers and South Korean disaster specialists, and appeared stable though mildly hypothermic as he was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Kathmandu.

Speaking afterwards to Chinese state television, he described calling out to rescue crews whenever he glimpsed their torchlight in the tunnel, only to go unheard each time, until a beam finally swept over him. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from Rasuwa district, said rain on Saturday had slowed the search there, though rescue teams were continuing to push ahead.

Shrestha, found covered in mud inside her flooded house, was given water by rescuers before being airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment, officials said.

Her rescue followed that of two Nepali tunnel workers pulled alive a day earlier from a nearby hydropower site, the first survivors recovered from any of the region’s damaged plants.

More than 1,300 dead, 5,000 still missing

The disaster has now killed at least 1,331 people in Nepal and left about 5,000 people missing, including 589 foreign nationals, according to the country’s national disaster authority.

Meanwhile, officials in Tibet, the autonomous region of China across the border, have recorded 31 deaths and 531 people missing.

About 900 workers remain unaccounted for at hydropower construction sites alone, with roughly 500 of them believed to still be trapped inside tunnels across a dozen projects wrecked by the floodwaters.

The glacier collapse that triggered the disaster sent debris crashing into towns and villages built along river valleys that Nepal has relied on for hydroelectric power, destroying roads, homes and schools in an area popular with foreign trekkers and pilgrims.

Search teams from India, China, South Korea and the United States have since joined the operation, along with a 15-member Australian drone unit sent this week, after Nepal asked for outside help in a rescue effort that had relied mainly on its own forces.

One of the survivors freed from the Trishuli 3A tunnel this week told rescuers that other workers were still alive further inside, the Nepali army said, and officials say further searches are now focused on that site.

Nepal’s information and communications minister, Bikram Timilsina, said authorities remained hopeful that more people would be found alive. “We are waiting for the rescue of more and more people,” he said.