Korean rescuers recovered a survivor from a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower plant site in Nepal. (courtesy KDRT)
A Chinese national rescued from a tunnel near where nine Koreans went off the radar during devastating floods in Nepal over a week ago told his Korean and Nepali rescuers that another person had been nearby him in the tunnel. The Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) utilized this knowledge to conduct further searches on Sunday. The KDRT announced Saturday that a survivor rescued from a tunnel at the construction site of the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower plant in Rasuwa District, Bagmati Province, in central-northern Nepal, stated that another person had been in the vicinity. The survivor, a Chinese national named Lu Haitao, was pulled out of a point roughly 225 meters inside the UT-1 hydropower plant by the Nepali army and Korean relief team’s joint efforts at 1:15 pm on Saturday.
Korean rescuers recovered a survivor from a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower plant site in Nepal. (courtesy KDRT)
“We are rescue,” one member said before saying that they were from Korea and asking where the survivor was from. When the survivor attempted to maneuver his way through the steel bars in front of him, the rescue team called out, telling him to wait. The relief team lowered the survivor, who had taken refuge in the upper part of the tunnel, to the ground before passing him on to a safety agent at the midpoint and enabling him to leave the tunnel. Lu was taken to a hospital via military helicopter and is currently in stable condition. CCTV reported that Lu had said he repeatedly shouted as loud as he could whenever she saw the lights of rescue crews. “When they rescued me today, when they shone [the light] before my eyes, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.The fact that a survivor was rescued some 10 days after last month’s devastating floods has given hope that the nine Koreans still unaccounted for may still be alive.
