By Saurabh Sharma and Joseph Campbell
TARKESHWAR, Nepal, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Dhan Bahadur Tamang was at work in a hydropower project near Nepal’s border with China when he sensed a sudden air pressure change in the underground tunnel at the Upper Trishuli 1 hydropower project.
Under the industrial floodlights, dust started to rise, the 32-year-old recalled: “Something was coming.”
Nobody in the tunnel was prepared for what was about to hit them: a flood wave that had by then already flattened entire settlements upstream on the Trishuli river and was rolling down the valley with immense destructive power that killed more than 1,252 people in Nepal.
Tamang, who had been hired by the project as a support worker, said hundreds may have been on site by the time the disaster struck last week.
“Suddenly, people started running, shouting, and scrambling,” Tamang said. “By the time I could have realized anything, I was over a top of a tanker (truck).”
“Once I was up, the vehicle began moving,” he said. Water began rushing into his section of the tunnel. “I felt again and again that I was going to die.”
CLINGING ON TO PIPES
Tamang held on to anything he could grab, climbing on pipes and trying to keep his head above the raging water. He suffered injuries to one of his legs.
“My mind kept going to my family. I thought about home, about my mother and father, about the people I might never see again. I shouted, I cried,” he said.
When the velocity of flood water receded, Tamang was still alive. So were others, he noticed with relief.
They tried to make their way back to the entrance of the tunnel, but found the route blocked by debris. The only other option was to head deeper into the tunnel system.
“As we moved, we started seeing bodies,” he said. Some people were injured and unable to move.
“There were bodies all around. We were trying to get out and save our lives. Some were crushed so badly that there was no help possible. They were dead bodies,” he said.
NOT GOING BACK TO WORK IN TUNNELS
By that point the tunnel was in near-complete darkness, so Tamang and the others held hands so as to not lose each other as they picked their way through the debris, guided by a single flashlight.
“It was a long, exhausting fight through darkness, water, wreckage, and bodies,” he said.
Then, he recalled, there was a burst of light. “When we finally came out, the outside brightness felt unreal.”
The shaking group of survivors was soon surrounded by other people, who supplied dry clothes. But Tamang said rescue operations proceeded only slowly, as fog stalled helicopter operations.
Determined to return to his family, Tamang made his way with the help of villagers but was later transferred to a hotel and then to a hospital for a medical checkup.
“When I finally met my wife, she cried,” said Tamang, who has had nightmares since his return, with his mind going back to scenes from the tunnel and memories of dead former colleagues.
“I will not work inside hydropower tunnels again,” he said. “I do not want to test fate.”
(Reporting by Saurabh Sharma and Joseph Campbell; Writing by Rick Noack; Editing by Devjyot Ghoshal and Alex Richardson)
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