By Sahana Bajracharya, Navesh Chitrakar and Joseph Campbell
KATHMANDU, Sept 5 (Reuters) – A Chinese national was pulled alive from a tunnel in Nepal on Saturday, authorities said, 10 days after a wall of ice, rock and mud tore through a Himalayan valley, killing more than 1,300 people.
The Nepali army said Lu Haitao was rescued from inside a 225-meter tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project.
He was the third person so far to be pulled out alive from various tunnels where authorities believe 900 people might be stuck after the August 26 collapse of a glacier on the upper reaches of the river.
On Friday, rescue workers pulled two people from another tunnel at the Upper Trishuli 3A Hydropower Station on the same river.
The authorities said Lu had no visible injuries and his vitals were stable, but showed signs of mild hypothermia.
Footage shared by the Nepali army showed him being given emergency medical attention inside a helicopter, which took him to an army hospital.
He appeared exhausted and disoriented, with dried mud and dust on his skin and clothing. A uniformed medic with a stethoscope was seen checking him.
At least 1,344 people have been killed in Nepal in the floods that swept away houses, streets and schools in towns and villages near the border with China’s Tibet, the disaster management authority said on Friday. About 4,887 are still missing, including 583 foreign nationals, many of them pilgrims and trekkers.
As of September 4, China said the death toll in Tibet was 31, with 531 others listed as missing, according to state media Xinhua.
A woman, Chandika Kumari Shrestha, was also rescued from her home in Betrawati on Saturday, the Nepali army said. In an image shared by authorities, she is seen caked in mud inside a flooded underground structure as rescuers offer her water while working in a confined space filled with thick sludge.
FAMILY STILL HOPES MISSING RELATIVE WILL BE FOUND
At the Maithili Barrack in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, families filled walls with posters showing loved ones believed to be trapped in the tunnels.
Among them was the image of Ishwor Poudel, the brother of 34-year-old Krishna Poudel. Ishwor has been a worker at the tunnel of the Hakubesi Hydroelectric Project for the past three years.
Krishna says he last heard from his brother on August 26, shortly after floodwaters tore through the valley.
“I spoke to him at 7:30 a.m. before he went into the tunnel for work. Around 11:30 a.m., after the floods came down, I finally got through and he told me: ‘I’m trapped inside the tunnel.'”
The family has had no contact with him since, but remains hopeful. Survivors who escaped from the same tunnel told them that Ishwor was still alive.
“I met so many people who were able to escape and knew my brother. They told me, ‘your brother is inside the tunnel, he was driving a vehicle inside.’ They said they could hear the voices of about 200-300 people shouting from inside.”
(Reporting by Sahana Bajracharya and Navesh Chitrakar; Writing by Aftab Ahmed; Editing by William Mallard, Sharon Singleton and Toby Chopra)
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