A mechanical foreman’s first words after rescue — “What day is it?” — capture a nation’s disbelief and relief

Nine days. That’s how long Sanjay Shah and Kabir Maharjan sat in total darkness more than 550 feet below ground, not knowing whether anyone was still looking for them. On Wednesday, Nepalese Army rescuers finally reached them inside the Trishuli 3A Hydroelectric Project in Rasuwa district, carrying both men out through a narrow, hand-dug passage — mud-caked, exhausted, but alive.

Shah, a mechanical foreman, and Maharjan, a site supervisor, were hoisted onto rescuers’ shoulders as soon as they cleared the tunnel mouth. Shah’s first question said everything about what nine days underground does to a person’s sense of time: “What day is it?” He later told rescue workers he’d spent the days praying in the dark and shouting periodically, hoping to hear another trapped worker answer back. Both men were airlifted to Kathmandu for medical evaluation shortly after reaching the surface.

A Disaster That Buried a Region

The two men’s survival is a rare bright spot in what has become one of Nepal’s worst natural disasters in recent memory. On August 26, a suspected glacial collapse high in the mountains near the Tibet border sent a wall of water, mud, and boulders crashing down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems, burying roads, villages, and industrial sites in its path.

The toll has been staggering. More than 1,200 people are confirmed dead, and over 5,000 remain unaccounted for across the affected districts. Roughly 900 workers were caught in the flooding at hydropower construction sites alone — part of Nepal’s fast-growing green-energy sector, built into the same steep river valleys that the floodwaters tore through. Officials believe more than 150 of those workers may still be trapped in half a dozen underground tunnels.

A Race Against Time, Fought With Drills and Drones

For over a week, the odds looked grim. Engineers worried that air pockets sustaining trapped workers underground could give out at any time, and every day that passed without contact narrowed the window for a rescue. But joint military and civilian engineering teams refused to stop working, boring narrow access shafts, threading in air lines, and using thermal-imaging drones to search for signs of life beneath tons of compacted silt and debris.

The breakthrough at Trishuli 3A came when rescue teams finally broke through into the underground chamber and heard voices — first Shah and Maharjan’s, and then, according to rescuers on site, what sounded like more voices echoing deeper in the tunnel system. That has kept crews digging rather than shifting to pure recovery mode, even nine days after the disaster struck.

Specialist tunnel-extraction teams from neighboring countries have since joined the Nepal Army in the effort, bringing in heavy drilling rigs and structural support equipment to stabilize shafts that engineers fear could still collapse further. Crews are now pushing into two more project sites, Rasuwagadhi and Upper Trishuli, hoping to repeat Wednesday’s outcome.

Relief and Anguish, Side by Side

Outside a Kathmandu hospital, Bidya Dangol waited for news of her brother, Kabir Maharjan, along with dozens of other families who have spent more than a week camped near medical centers and government offices for any word on missing loved ones. When she finally saw him alive, she had one way to describe it: “This is nothing short of a miracle.”

Her relief sits uneasily alongside the grief of thousands of other families still waiting, many with far less reason for hope after nine days. Rescue officials have been careful not to promise more survivors, but they’ve also stopped short of ruling it out. The fact that two men survived this long in total darkness, they say, is proof that trapped air pockets can sustain life longer than standard rescue timelines assume — reason enough to keep drilling.

What Comes Next

As search crews push deeper into the remaining tunnels, questions are already surfacing about how hydropower construction sites built into flood-prone valleys can be better protected — and evacuated — the next time a glacial lake or landslide lets go without warning. For now, though, the mission on the ground remains narrow and urgent: reach whoever else might still be listening in the dark, and bring them home.