- A flood trapped 35 workers at a hydropower plant on Bhote Koshi river in Nepal
- Workers waded through neck-high water for two hours to escape a dark tunnel
- Rescue operations continue after a glacial landslide caused deadly floods downstream
A gust of wind rushed in first. It made an ominous sound, and they wondered what was happening. Was it a storm? Someone said earthquake. Then the lights went out.
And water came in.
The Nepal flood of August 26 trapped workers at a hydropower plant along the Bhote Koshi river in the deadly flow that claimed hundreds of lives in the region.
Vishnu Bahadur Thapa described the scene as he was among the 35 workers who were rescued soon after the deadly gush took death and destruction further downstream.
"Once the lights went out, we were trapped. I fell as I tried to run out," he told NDTV, in a slush-hit settlement along the river.
"There was a tunnel exit a little away from where I was trying to get out. Just then the water came."
He said they were all eventually wading through neck-high water.
"For about 3 kilometres, I dragged my body. We had lost all hope of getting out." He said they were fortunate that only water came in, and not much mud or slush.
It took two hours of finding their way through water and dark in the tunnel before they saw light.
Thapa shook his head, struggling for words, when asked how those still possibly alive inside other tunnels would be surviving for eight days and counting.
"It is very difficult to come out. Very difficult," he said, pausing, struggling and forming his thoughts. "What must they be doing inside?" he wondered aloud. "You can't even imagine what will happen to them... I can't even imagine."
He then described what he thought of when he was struggling to get out. "I was thinking I won't be able to get out. I did not have anything. I was alone. I was thinking where my family would be."
He said that even if he were saved, "I didn't know if the family would be saved or not".
He found them alive. "My son and daughter are safe. My wife was upstairs; she is safe too," he said.
He was not sure at first if he would return to the hydropower project if and when it is back up. It took a moment.
"Yes," he then said. "I have to earn money. I have to take care of my family. I will work in the hydro project again. No problem."
At least 12 hydropower projects have been damaged in the flood. Rescue operations continue across the region along the rivers Bhote Koshi and Trishuli, the two that carried the bulk of the deadly slurry that originated from a glacial landslide in the small river of Lhende near Nepal's border with Tibet, China.
Over 1,200 people are confirmed dead so far, and around 4,000 remain missing.
