Two Men Walk Out of Trishuli-3A After Nine Days in the Dark

This is a special report in our Bhote Koshi / Rasuwa flood .

• Devastating Flash Flood Hits Nepal’s Rasuwa District Near Tibet Border
• Nepal / China Flood Update: Death Toll Climbs to 469 as a New Natural Dam Threatens Another Surge
• Nepal Flood Day 4: Death Toll Passes 620 as Missing Lists Stretch Across 30+ Countries
• Nepal Flood Day 6: Death Toll Hits 903, Tunnel Rescues Intensify, and the World Starts Sending Aid
• Nepal Flood Day 7: Death Toll Crosses 1,000 as Tunnel Teams Push Deeper and Aid Passes $42 Million
• Climate Justice After Rasuwa: Who Pays When Nepal Emits Almost Nothing — and Loses Everything
• Nepal Flood Day 8: Death Toll Hits 1,204, Tunnel Rescue Stalls in Mud, and Kathmandu Takes the Climate Bill Abroad
• Solana Raises $166,946 for Nepal Flood Relief as the Death Toll Reaches 1,252
• NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Pledges $10 Million as Fresh Flood Alerts Return and 1,252 Bodies Are Counted

For eight days the hydropower tunnels were a grave. On Friday morning they were not.

Joint teams pulled two men alive from the Upper Trishuli-3A tunnel, about 170 metres inside, nine to ten days after the 26 August surge. The Nepal Army named them:

• Sanjay Sah, 30, mechanical foreman, Nepal Electricity Authority, from Saptari
• Kabir Maharjan, 45, mechanical supervisor, Nepal Electricity Authority

Sah was brought out first, covered in mud, and said thank you. He is described as stable. Maharjan came second. He cannot move his hands and legs and was taken into intensive care. Both were airlifted toward Kathmandu — Sah toward Birendra Army Hospital, Maharjan toward critical care.

Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha’s office confirmed the names. Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet confirmed the place.

Watch the rescue

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How they were found

Rescuers had spent days blasting and crawling along the crown of the cable tunnel — a thin gap under the roof — because the floor was a slurry of mud and rocks bigger than cars. Australian engineer Arnold Dix, advising the job, called the find “layer upon layer of miracles.”

They shouted. Someone answered. Reports of the exchange are almost the same everywhere: Don’t panic, we are rescuing you. A faint yes / okay came back.

Sah later told an Army medical team he had stayed in the control room because he felt responsible for the others. He also said he had been able to hear three or four people nearby. That sentence is why Friday is not only a rescue story. It is a reason to keep digging.

One body was also recovered from the same tunnel. By afternoon some officers said they had found no further voices in the sections they could reach, and that the powerhouse search had so far turned up nothing else. Other briefings still put about 39 people in that tunnel and more than 100 missing across the Trishuli hydropower belt. Both things can be true at once: two men are out, and the mountain is not finished.

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The rest of the corridor

This is the first confirmed live tunnel rescue of the disaster. It is not the only survival story.

At Upper Trishuli-1, about 40 workers walked out days earlier after a flood-swept vehicle jammed in the tunnel mouth and blocked the worst of the mud. They waited, then waded out through sludge for hours. That accident saved a crew. Trishuli-3A took nine days of explosives, compressors and crawling.

Hundreds of hydropower workers remain unaccounted for across the projects. IPPAN has used figures in the hundreds to more than 600, depending on the list.

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The wider count

The last official NDRRMA noon sheet still read 1,252 recovered and 4,216 missing, with 11,993 rescued. Friday wire reports put the death toll as high as 1,282. On the Tibet / Gyirong side, Chinese figures cited this week were 21 dead and 541 missing.

Identification is still the slow work: DNA from the dead, DNA from families, symbolic funerals where no body will come. Rain on the headwaters remains a second-week risk. The Prithvi Highway cut at Krishnabhir has not vanished because two men lived.

The money track from the last two posts stands: Solana’s $166,946.50 auction toward the Prime Minister’s fund, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s $10 million pledge. Neither replaces a tunnel crew. Both are still only as good as the receipts.

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What Friday changes

Yesterday the tunnels were mud and a lecture in Parliament about why machines could not stand.
Today two NEA workers are in hospital, one of them smiling on a stretcher, and an engineer is talking about a “Goldilocks zone” deeper in the plant where air pockets might still hold people.

Hope is not a body count. It is a voice that answered. The job now is to find out whether those other voices were real.

#Nepal #Trishuli3A #TunnelRescue #Rasuwa #BhoteKoshi #NepaliArmy #Steemit

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Sources

1. Nepal Army / Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet; Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha’s office, 4 September 2026.
2. The Himalayan Times; India Today; The Guardian; BBC live blog — names, condition, 170 metres, airlift.
3. The New York Times — Arnold Dix account; Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan as NEA staff.
4. The Kathmandu Post — later search found no more survivors in reached sections; one body recovered.
5. BBC / NEA official Suresh Raut — about 39 believed in the same tunnel.
6. Times of India — Upper Trishuli-1 vehicle that plugged the mouth and saved about 40 workers.
7. NDRRMA Thursday noon bulletin — 1,252 / 4,216 / 11,993. Friday wires: death toll reports up to 1,282.
8. Rescue video:

Rescue video:

Rescue video:

Previous series post: NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Pledges $10 Million…

Research and editing note

Researched and drafted with Grok (xAI). Early Friday briefings and later “no more voices” statements do not fully agree; both are recorded. Casualty figures remain provisional.