These Men Had a Hellish Escape From Nepal’s Flooded Tunnels
Sandego.net – These men had a hellish escape that no amount of preparation could have anticipated. On a single catastrophic day, the Trishuli river — one of the most violent waterways cutting through the Himalayan foothills of central Nepal — transformed into a roaring wall of ice, silt, and shattered concrete. The flood tore roughly 62 miles (100 km) downstream, swallowing entire settlements and killing hundreds in what stands as the worst natural disaster to hit the country in years. At the epicenter of the devastation sit deep-bore hydropower tunnels bored into the world’s tallest mountain range, where more than 900 construction workers remain unaccounted for.
Of those trapped inside, approximately 279 hydro-power workers have since been extracted or have forced their way free through passages choked with mud and debris. At the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant, rescue teams labored through the night into Sunday, drilling narrow shafts into the collapsed tunnel structure to pump in breathable air and lower food, praying to reach anyone still alive within.
Clinging to the Ceiling: A Six-Hour Crawl Through Darkness
For Ram Chandra, survival arrived in absolute darkness, hundreds of meters from the nearest exit. Water, concrete fragments, and debris surged through the tunnel along the Trishuli’s banks, nearly sweeping him off his feet. He seized a metal rung bolted into the tunnel’s roof and held on for dear life.
“The water was rising and it was difficult to move my legs. If I had let go from that rung I would have fallen.”
Chandra and a small cluster of colleagues grabbed a tin sheet, passed it around the group, and used it as a makeshift footing. They inched forward rung by rung for six hours. By the time they reached the tunnel gate, one additional survivor was already waiting there — seven men in total, stripped bare by the torrent. Emerging into daylight, they confronted the full scale of the destruction: the river below still surging, stained black with debris and ice, the mountains above having unleashed a deluge that erased communities downstream. These men had a hellish six-hour ordeal behind them, and the landscape ahead offered no comfort.
The Jumla Connection: A Village’s Collective Grief
Many of the rescued workers trace their origins to Jumla, a remote district in Nepal’s far west where maize terraces cling to near-vertical slopes and village life runs on tight-knit kinship networks. Roughly fifteen of the survivors spoken to by journalists hail from that region. Every single one had lost a relative or close friend in the flood. Most had also lost their clothes to the water and stood in borrowed trousers, shirts, and sandals lent by villagers who scrambled to help.
Madan Singh Budha had just come off the night shift at Upper Trishuli tunnel number 2 when the deluge struck. He looked outside, saw water, and began running up the hillside.
“The hill was rocky, with grass growing in between. We used that grass to hold on to as we climbed.”
He was airlifted out of the disaster zone by helicopter on Sunday. Those who could not make the climb, he said, were swept away. What followed was a desperate, disorienting search for colleagues — a task made nearly impossible by the scale of the collapse and the chaos of communication.
“The Reality Is Nothing”
Bhakti Ram Bohara, another survivor, places himself in a grim minority. He estimated that roughly 1,000 people were working across his project and adjacent sites when the flood hit. Only around 100 of those had made it out. Among the missing was his brother-in-law — a man who had worked on the same team, spending weeks away from family at a time and sending earnings back to their shared village.
“His wife is my sister, and she is pregnant.”
Bohara broke down into tears as he spoke the words.
Amar Bista, a tour guide who was not himself working in the tunnels, rushed into action the moment he learned of the catastrophe at a site where dozens of his own family members and friends were employed. Identifying who was missing, who was safe, and then physically bringing people out became a near-impossible logistical task. Standing with the group he had helped save, Bista told reporters he had not slept for four days.
“They all are from my area, you know.”
He gestured to the men standing silently around him, tears on his face. When he first reached the site by helicopter, the sheer magnitude of the destruction struck him hard. He pointed to media reports of rescues from the worst-affected zones and offered a blunt assessment:
“People still have hope. But the reality is nothing.”
Bista described nights spent crying, thinking of cousins and sisters who had lost children — teenagers, some of them — to the flood. For these men, the hellish aftermath was not a single night but an endless rotation of waiting, searching, and grief that showed no sign of ending.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many workers are still missing in the Nepal hydro tunnel floods? More than 900 construction workers remain unaccounted for across the affected tunnel sites. Approximately 279 have been rescued or have escaped on their own as of the latest reports.
Where did the Trishuli river flood occur? The disaster struck central Nepal along the Trishuli river, affecting roughly 62 miles (100 km) of downstream terrain and multiple hydropower tunnel sites, including the Trishuli 3A plant and Upper Trishuli tunnel number 2.
How did survivors escape the flooded tunnels? Some, like Ram Chandra, clung to structural rungs in the tunnel ceiling and crawled for hours using improvised footholds. Others, like Madan Singh Budha, climbed rocky hillsides outside the tunnel entrances. Several were ultimately airlifted by helicopter once accessible.
What is being done to reach workers still trapped inside? Rescue crews are boring narrow shafts into the collapsed tunnel structures to pump in breathable air and lower food supplies, working around the clock to reach anyone still alive within the sealed passages.
