How two men survived nine days in a Nepal flood tunnel

Trapped in an air pocket beneath the wreckage of a hydropower tunnel, two workers endured nine days of darkness, mud and dwindling hope before rescuers heard a faint sound from underground.
How two men survived nine days in a Nepal flood tunnel.

Survivor Kabir Maharjan is carried by members of a search and rescue team after they rescued two people alive who had been trapped inside a tunnel at the Trishuli-3A Hydropower Project following devastating floods and mudslides that struck the Bhotekoshi River in Rasuwa, Nepal, September 4, 2026.

A delirious Kabir Maharjan drifted in and out of consciousness in a pool of muddy water in complete darkness, trapped for nine days in a tunnel beneath the wreckage of Nepal’s worst flood disaster in decades.

When he finally awoke at a hospital after a miracle rescue, he did not recognise his wife. Confused, he asked her why she had not given him a bed sooner.

Maharjan was one of hundreds of hydropower workers believed to have been buried when a glacier collapsed above Nepal’s Trishuli valley on August 26, unleashing a wall of mud and water that killed more than 1,300 people and left thousands missing across Nepal and neighbouring Tibet.

He and mechanical foreman Sanjay Sah survived in an air-filled chamber, said lawmaker Shri Ram Neupane, a veteran tunnel engineer who helped lead the rescue effort.

Their rescue against the odds has given hope to search teams working at the sites along the devastated valley that some of the 121 workers still believed to be trapped in tunnels as of Monday are still alive.

Reuters has reconstructed the full story of the men’s survival and the frantic effort to save them through exclusive interviews with a dozen people, including the previously unreported accounts shared by relatives, engineers, government officials and rescuers directly involved in the operation and a review of site documents and maps.