Two rescued from Nepal hydropower plant as voices heard after nine days

Nine days into what had become a desperate, grinding rescue operation in the Himalayan foothills, two men emerged from the darkness of the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant. Rescuers pulled them from a small opening bored into the tunnel system, and the moment one man reached the surface, about a dozen workers broke into applause. It was the first tangible success in a race against time that had consumed hundreds of rescue personnel working in treacherous conditions across multiple energy projects along Nepal's Trishuli River.

The breakthrough came as authorities reported hearing additional voices from deeper within the tunnels—a sign that others trapped in the underground passages might still be alive. Bipin Regmi, the police chief in Nuwakot district, confirmed the rescue to CNN and noted that a medical team was being dispatched to the site. The discovery offered a measure of hope after nine days of uncertainty, though the scale of the challenge remained immense. Forty-two workers were still unaccounted for inside the Trishuli 3A plant alone, and the tunnel system leading to the underground powerhouse stretched more than four kilometers into the mountain.

The catastrophe had unfolded with brutal speed. Massive flash floods and landslides triggered by the same weather event that devastated the broader region had poured into the river valley, trapping hundreds of workers across multiple hydropower facilities. The floodwater, thick with cement-like sediment, had surged through the tunnels where crews were working. The death toll across Nepal from the floods had already exceeded 1,200 people. Among those trapped in the plants were foreign nationals from China, South Korea, and India—workers drawn to Nepal's hydropower sector from across Asia.

The rescue effort itself had become a study in the limits of human endurance and the psychology of survival in extreme conditions. Parikshit Mehra, an Indian army colonel leading a specialized rescue team at the site, laid out the brutal timeline in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. The first forty-eight hours after entrapment are the most critical, Mehra explained. Panic sets in quickly when people are confined underground. Darkness alone causes disorientation within roughly a day. After two days, hallucinations begin. Beyond that point, survival becomes a matter of psychological and physical will.

Yet Mehra also offered a counterpoint to the grim calculus. "There have been miracles," he said. The rescue of the two men nine days after the initial disaster seemed to confirm his point. That they had survived this long in a dark tunnel, without knowing if rescue was coming, suggested either extraordinary luck or the kind of resilience that defies the standard survival curves. The medical team en route to the site would need to assess their physical condition—dehydration, hypothermia, and the effects of prolonged confinement in cold, damp conditions would all be concerns.

The operation to reach the trapped workers had required boring directly into the tunnel system, a process that demanded precision and patience in conditions where every hour mattered. The rescue teams had worked continuously, but the sheer distance involved—more than four kilometers of tunnel—meant that reaching all the trapped workers would take time even if the boring operation succeeded. The voices heard by rescuers suggested that at least some of those unaccounted for were still conscious and able to signal their presence, a critical factor in any rescue attempt.

As the medical team moved toward the site and rescue operations continued, the focus remained on the forty workers still missing. The success of the first two rescues had proven that survival was possible, but it had also underscored how much remained unknown about the conditions inside the tunnel and the state of those still trapped. The race against the forty-eight-hour psychological threshold that Mehra had described was now nine days old, and the outcome for the remaining workers would depend on whether the rescue teams could reach them before the combination of darkness, cold, and isolation took its toll.