Rescue Teams Pull Nepali Woman and Chinese Visitor to Safety After Deadly Floods

When the monsoon clouds finally broke over the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river corridors, the devastation was almost unimaginable – entire villages washed away, roads turned into rivers, and a handful of people vanished without a trace.

Eleven days after those torrents ripped through the hills, a glimmer of relief arrived. In the sleepy market town of Betrawati Bazaar, Nuwakot district, a team of the Armed Police Force, led by Inspector Suman Bik, stumbled upon a 64‑year‑old woman named Chandrika Shrestha. She was curled up on the floor of a damaged house, unconscious but very much alive.

Rescuers lifted her gently, rushed her to a waiting helicopter, and whisked her to the Nepali Army’s Maithili Barracks in Trishuli for initial treatment. Officials say she’ll soon be flown to Kathmandu for further care, assuming her condition holds steady.

Not far away, in the rugged Rasuwa district, a different drama unfolded. Deep inside the tunnel of the 216‑MW Upper Trishuli 1 Hydropower Project, a Chinese national was found trapped in Audit 4. The Nepali Army, collaborating with a South Korean disaster‑expert team, managed to extract him after a tense, hours‑long operation.

He, too, was taken to the Maithili Barracks for medical assessment. While his exact condition remains private, doctors are monitoring him closely.

These rescues are part of a broader, frantic push to locate anyone who might still be trapped inside the sprawling network of hydropower tunnels that were inundated when the rivers burst their banks. Over a dozen projects along the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys suffered severe damage, and many workers have yet to be accounted for.

According to the Independent Power Producers’ Association of Nepal (IPPAN), the Upper Trishuli 1 project alone has the highest number of missing personnel – 551 out of a total of 936 workers still uncontacted across eleven flood‑affected sites.

Just a day before the Chinese survivor’s rescue, the Nepali Army freed two of its own citizens from the tunnel of the 60‑MW Upper Trishuli 3A project, underscoring the relentless nature of the search‑and‑rescue mission.

International expertise has been poured into the effort. Teams from India, China and South Korea have been on the ground, lending technical know‑how to navigate the perilous underground passages.

As the monsoon season eases, the focus now shifts to rebuilding—re‑establishing communication with missing workers, repairing the shattered infrastructure, and, most importantly, supporting the families of those who survived against the odds.