Rescuers pulled a Nepali woman alive from her home buried under thick mud and debris when the region was struck by massive flooding 10 days ago.
Emergency personnel said earlier yesterday they had rescued a Chinese man found alive inside a tunnel of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Nepal’s Rasuwa district.
Members of Nepal’s Armed Police Force cheered as the mud-caked 64-year-old woman, Chandrika Shrestha, was pulled from her buried home in Nuwakot district.
“A police team found her as they were clearing the area. She has been airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment,” said police deputy superintendent Iqbal Hawari.
A video released by Nepal’s Armed Police Force showed only a part of her house visible, with the lower floors completely submerged by thick sludge.
Emergency response teams have been working relentlessly to find survivors since a tsunami-like wall of water and mud swept through the China-Nepal border following a glacial and rock collapse on Aug 26.
Meanwhile, a joint rescue team comprising personnel from the Nepal Army and foreign experts rescued the man from 225m inside the tunnel of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project in Rasuwa district, a military statement said.
A picture of the rescue published on the army’s Facebook page shows the man, identified only as Luhaitao, with his arms around the shoulders of two camouflage-clad rescuers.
He looked alert but his hands were covered in thick, slimy mud.
“His health is currently being assessed and further search and rescue operations are continuing,” the army said.
The survivor was among hundreds of hydropower workers who went missing since the disaster struck on Aug 26.
Two Nepali hydropower workers were rescued on Friday at the Trishuli 3A tunnel, where searches continued alongside multiple other sites, with at least 12 hydropower projects destroyed by the floods.
So far, 1,344 bodies have been recovered in Nepal, according to the national disaster agency, with around 5,000 people missing.
In China, state media said 31 people had been killed and 531 were missing. That takes the overall death toll to 1,375 people, and more than 5,500 missing.
Army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet said that “work is underway at the tunnels” to locate any survivors.
Experts from India, China, Australia and South Korea have been aiding Nepali rescuers in their search of survivors inside blocked tunnels.
With morgues overflowing, some 1,030 bodies have been buried in mass graves after taking DNA samples for future identification, Nepal Police said yesterday. — AFP
