After days of anxious waiting, Lu Haitao's family could finally breathe a sigh of relief when the Chinese man was rescued from a tunnel in Nepal where devastating floods killed more than 1,300 people. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
Rescuers carried Lu out of a 225-meter (740-foot) hydropower tunnel and evacuated him by helicopter Saturday, 10 days after the floods. He was taken to a hospital and was in stable condition, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The Aug. 26 floods were likely caused by a glacier collapse and nearly 4,900 remain missing, according to Nepal's disaster management agency. On the Tibet side of the border, 43 people died and 519 were missing as of Saturday evening, CCTV reported.
Lu recalled climbing to the highest point inside the tunnel and thinking the whistles he heard from the rescue crews were in his imagination, according to audio shared by CCTV. He told a Chinese embassy staffer that the emergency personnel initially could not hear him when he shouted toward their lights.
"When they shone before my eyes, I couldn't believe it," he said. "I no longer shouted. I had lost hope."
Lu Hairong, Lu's sister in China, told state media Red Star News that she received a call about the rescue before the news emerged. But she only found it believable after seeing him in a picture in the news.
Her 49-year-old brother, who is married with a son, was previously a farmer from Henan province in central China and took additional work, mainly carpentry, during his spare time. He headed to Nepal for work with a fellow villager in February, his first time working abroad, she told Red Star News.
She told Cover News, another Chinese state media outlet, that Lu had not shared his exact working location and she could only watch the news sent by others in a mutual aid group for families of the missing, unable to eat or sleep well.
"It's a stroke of sheer luck," she said.