Updated September 5, 2026 — 9:55pm,first published 4:50pmKathmandu: An Australian tunnelling expert who helped orchestrate the extraordinary rescue of two workers from a hydropower tunnel in northern Nepal is headed for the disaster zone, firmly believing there is still hope of finding more survivors trapped hundreds of metres below the earth.After helping to lead the rescue operation remotely from his home in Victoria this week, engineer and geologist Arnold Dix flew into Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, late on Friday night (Nepal time).Australian tunnelling expert Arnold Dix has arrived in disaster-stricken Nepal believing there is still hope of finding survivors. Justin McManusIt comes as rescuers in Nepal pulled a Chinese national alive from a hydropower tunnel on Saturday, according to a social media post by the country’s prime minister’s office, and in a separate effort, a woman was rescued from a house 10 days after floods hit Betrawati, a Nepalese army spokesperson said.The latest tunnel rescue brings the total to three workers pulled alive from the Trishuli hydropower project. Two Nepalese workers were rescued from a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A hydropower plant on Friday.Nepal’s army said a joint team of Nepalese military personnel and South Korean disaster experts rescued the man from a 225-metre tunnel, and that he was undergoing a health assessment.In Betrawati, the family of Chandika Shrestha, 64, called authorities after hearing a noise while checking her house, The New York Times reported. Officials found her alive and said she was airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment.Images released by Nepal’s army showed rescuers finding Shrestha covered in mud inside the damaged house. They gave her bottled water before pulling her to safety, wrapped in a grey blanket.While the odds are against Dix and the rest of the global team of experts providing advice to Nepalese authorities on the ongoing rescue mission, he said he absolutely believed there was hope of finding more survivors under the earth some 10 days after the devastating floods.“In the game of paper, scissor, rock, human, the odds aren’t good. But yeah [there are] survivable pockets, absolutely, and that’s what we’re aiming for,” he said.On Saturday morning, he boarded a helicopter for the Chilime Hydropower Plant, high in the Himalayan valley and close to the Chinese border.A helicopter drops search and rescue teams at the exit tunnel of the Chilime Hydropower Plant during the week.Kate GeraghtyThere he will meet with members of the Indian rescue team he worked with after 41 men were trapped in the Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel in the Himalayas in 2023. Dix has also worked on other rescue missions, including at Ground Zero after September 11.“We’re just like the underground rescue buddies,” he told this masthead just ahead of his flight on Saturday.It has been more than a week since devastating floods tore through Nepal, causing tsunami-like waves of water, rock and debris that have resulted in at least 1300 deaths. More than 5000 people remain missing, including 36 Australians among hundreds of foreign nationals.A young girl with her parents commute across the Trishuli river on a newly installed zipline in the aftermath of flash floods at Bidur, Nuwakot district.AP Photo/Niranjan ShresthaAmong those still unaccounted for are workers believed to be trapped inside the hydropower tunnels that Nepal has used to harness the fast-flowing waters of the Himalayas and increase the blackout-prone country’s power generation.Nepal’s Independent Power Producers’ Association said during the week that it believed ​at least eight people could be trapped in the Chilime tunnel. It is one of seven hydropower tunnels at which rescue operations are taking place, with hundreds of workers believed to have been trapped.Until Friday, Dix had helped the effort remotely from Australia, unable to board a plane during the crucial hours and days after the disaster.“Time was of the essence,” he said. “I couldn’t lose two days because I knew they had to start digging.”They had focused on the Trishuli 3A ­hydropower project, and he said the rescue of mechanical foreman Sanjay Sah and mechanical supervisor Kabir Maharjan from the tunnel on Friday was confirmation of the work he and others had been doing throughout the week.“[It means] we’ve got survivable zones in there,” Dix said. “That confirms our theory, if you like. Until that, it was a theory. We really didn’t know if it was survivable in there.”It makes him believe there could “absolutely” be more workers still alive inside.“Of course, the odds are against us. Like, you wouldn’t, you know, go to the casino and play the house on these things normally,” he said.Dix and his team had relied on engineering drawings of the massive hydropower structures that Nepal uses to generate electricity, as well as satellite imagery, to identify the survivable pockets inside.“The world has never had something like this,” he said.Arnold Dix has previously helped to orchestrate the rescue of 41 Indian workers who were trapped for 17 days after a landslide in the Himalayas. “We’re not dealing with tunnels that might’ve collapsed. They won’t have. We’re dealing with tunnels that are filled up with stuff.“It’s this explosive inrush. It just turns the textbook on its head … that’s why the rescue yesterday was so important because we’ve never dealt with anything like this.”While they were confident in their theory, the challenge of digging into the deep, unstable earth, where “rocks the size of cars” had barrelled into the tunnels, presented many challenges of its own.“That’s on the one hand, and the other hand, [the question was] how the hell are we going to get in there to get them?” he said.“You have to find a reason to use your resources, which is where might people be alive? That’s the first question, and then your second question is, ‘OK, now, how do we get them?’“You can’t just dig everywhere. You’ve seen the destruction here, so you’ve got to be very specific in what you do.”In the end, though, relying on the information they had, Dix and other global experts had to make a decision.“You can do some fancy calculations about whether they could survive or not, or you go: ‘Well, look, what are we going to do? Stick round and have a bloody conference about it, or do we dig?’ And so you dig,” he said.With APRead more reporting from Nepal by South-East Asia correspondent Zach Hope and chief photojournalist Kate Geraghty:From our partners