Miraculous Escapes and Desperate Rescues: Surviving Nepal's Devastating Hydro Tunnel Floods

Rescue workers taking part in a rescue operation near the tunnel of the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project, following deadly flash floods and mudslides in Nepal. As water, concrete and debris stormed through the darkness, almost sweeping him off his feet, Ram Chandra tightly gripped onto one of the rungs studded into the roof of the tunnel he was working in on the banks of Nepal’s Trishuli river. His quick reaction likely saved his life.

He and the small group of colleagues he was with were hundreds of meters from the exit. “The water was rising and it was difficult to move my legs. If I had let go from that rung I would have fallen,” Ram Chandra said. He grabbed hold of a tin sheet to have something to place under his feet and they passed it around the group as they inched their way forward rung by rung for six hours.

“There were six of us and we later found someone else at the gate of the tunnel,” he said. By the time they emerged, the waters had claimed their clothing. In the daylight they saw the catastrophic destruction the flood had left in its wake, the still surging river below, stained dark by the debris, ice and silt.

The mountains above had unleashed a cataclysmic deluge that swept 62 miles (100 km) downstream, killing hundreds and burying entire communities in the worst natural disaster to hit Nepal in years. Among the missing are more than 900 workers, like Ram Chandra, from the many hydropower projects that bore deep into the world’s highest mountain range to tap into the fearsome energy unleashed by its raging rivers.

Some 279 hydropower workers have been rescued, or managed to trudge their way out of the mud and silt riddled tunnels, but others are feared trapped. Rescuing workers trapped inside hydropower plants is now the “highest priority,” said Biraj Bhakta Shrestha, Nepal’s Minister of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, in a post on X late Saturday night.

Madan Singh Budha had come off the night shift at the Upper Trishuli tunnel number 2 when the deluge struck. “When I looked outside, I could see water and so I started running up the hill,” he told CNN after being brought down from the disaster zone by helicopter on Sunday. “The hill was rocky, with grass growing in between. We used that grass to hold on to as we climbed. Those who weren’t able to climb up were swept away.”

Then began the desperate, confusing search for their colleagues. Madan Singh Budha, Ram Chandra and roughly 15 other rescued hydro workers CNN spoke to hail from Jumla in the far west of Nepal. Everyone in the group had lost a relative or friend. Like Ram Chandra, many had even lost their clothes to the torrent, and were attired in borrowed trousers, shirts and sandals, lent by villagers when they had scrambled to safety.

Bhakti Ram Bohara is one of the survivors. By his account, he is in a minority, estimating there were about 1,000 people working on his and other nearby projects, with only around 100 of those having made it out. Among the missing was his brother-in-law, who worked on the same team. “His wife is my sister, and she is pregnant,” he said, breaking down into tears.

Efforts continued through Sunday night as heavy machinery clawed at thick mud under floodlights to free workers feared trapped inside the hydropower plants. At the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant, searchers bored a hole to pump in air and drop down food to as many as 100 workers who may have survived. Geologist Arnold Dix, who was instrumental in saving 41 Indian workers from a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas in 2023, is providing technical advice to the emergency crews from his office in Melbourne, Australia.

Amar Bista, a tour guide, rushed into action as soon as he heard of the catastrophe at the site where dozens of his family members and friends worked. “People still have hope,” he said, referring to media reports of people being rescued. “Pero la realidad es nada. A lot of nights I cannot sleep (because I’m) crying. You know, like some of my cousins, sisters, they lost their kids. You can only imagine, like 18 year old kids.”

Up at the disaster site, the rescue required something almost unthinkable: going back into the tunnels that had claimed so many of his people. “No one wants to go back there,” Amar Bista said. “But they want their friends back.” Late on Sunday the group filed onto a bus that would take them back to the capital Kathmandu, the first step in a journey back to Jumla and their families that can take days by road.