For Lu Haitao’s family in China, ten days of agonizing silence ended on Saturday with a miracle. The 49 year old man was pulled from a dark hydropower tunnel in Nepal, having survived a catastrophic flooding event that claimed over 1,300 lives across the region. Carried out of a 225 meter stretch of concrete and whisked away by helicopter, Lu is now in stable condition at a local hospital. His survival comes amidst a wider tragedy likely triggered by a glacier collapse, which has left nearly 4,900 people still missing throughout the South Asian nation.
The ordeal inside the tunnel was harrowing, leaving Lu questioning his own sanity as rescuers searched for him. In audio shared by state broadcaster CCTV, Lu described climbing to the highest possible point within the structure and hearing distant whistles that he initially dismissed as hallucinations. Even when rescue teams began shining lights into the void, he struggled to make himself heard through shouting. By the time the beams finally illuminated his face, he admitted he had completely lost hope of ever seeing his family again.
Back home in Henan province, the wait had been unbearable for Lu’s sister and cousin. A former farmer turned carpenter, Lu had traveled to Nepal in February for work with a fellow villager, marking his first venture abroad. Because he had never shared his exact coordinates with his relatives, his sister spent days scouring mutual aid groups for any scrap of information, unable to eat or sleep while fearing the worst. When she first received word of the rescue via phone, she found it too surreal to be true until she saw photographic evidence confirming her brother’s identity.
The emotional toll extended to his cousin, Lu Haiqing, who spent her mornings weeping on her way to work and using artificial intelligence tools to translate Nepali news reports into Chinese just to stay informed. For her and other family members, the rescue felt like a stroke of sheer luck against impossible odds. While they celebrate this singular victory, the surrounding landscape remains grim; nearby border regions continue to suffer heavy losses from mudslides and debris flows, with floral tributes appearing among the ruins as search crews continue to dig for those still missing.