Rescuers pull Lu Haitao and Chandika Shrestha alive 10 days after Nepal's glacial flood

Two more people came out alive on 5 September from the wreckage left by the 26 August glacial collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border. Chinese hydropower worker Lu Haitao was pulled from about 225 metres inside a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 project in Rasuwa. Chandika Kumari Shrestha, 64, was found on an upper floor of her house in Nuwakot, in mud deep enough that neighbours had taken the building for a grave.

The Nepali Army flew Lu to an army hospital in Kathmandu. Footage released by the force showed him mud-caked, holding water, with a doctor on the helicopter checking his chest. South Korean disaster specialists worked the tunnel with Nepali soldiers. He was described as stable and mildly hypothermic.

Armed Police Force teams found Shrestha while clearing Betrawati. Deputy superintendent Iqbal Hawari said she was airlifted to Kathmandu. In comments carried by Reuters and CNN she said she had called out earlier and thought no one had heard. When lights finally reached her she did not at first believe the rescue was real. Name spellings in first reports swung between Chandika and Chandrika, and between Shrestha's mid-sixties ages. The army and police notes used Chandika and 64.

Friday had already produced two live recoveries from a different tunnel at Upper Trishuli 3A. Lieutenant Colonel Ganga Baral told the New York Times that rescuers crawled through sludge and called ahead: "We are coming. Don't worry, the Nepali Army is coming." Sanjay Sah, one of those two men, said more than 40 other workers were thought to be still inside that tunnel. Dirghayu Kumar Shrestha of the Nepal Electricity Authority said the body of a mechanical engineer was also brought out on Friday.

The flood began when ice, rock and water came off a high slope near the border and ran the Trishuli valley. Police on Saturday put the recovered dead at 1,344, of whom 758 were listed as adults, 85 as children and 501 as incomplete remains. Thousands remain missing. Search teams are in their eleventh and twelfth days. Rain on Saturday slowed the Rasuwa work.

Hydropower tunnels are both a tomb and a shelter. A sealed heading can hold air and a trickle of water. It can also fill with mud that sets like concrete. The Friday and Saturday recoveries show that some headings still had an air pocket. They do not show how many. Engineers used satellite images to find the 3A site because the surface plant had been buried past recognition.

Each live find resets the search clock. Commanders keep machines on a tunnel they would otherwise mark as a body-recovery job. That choice costs daylight and fuel. It is the choice the army is still making on Sunday. The other choice, already visible in Nuwakot, is to treat every half-standing house as a possible air pocket. Shrestha's fourth-floor room was that pocket.

The missing count will not fall as fast as the rescue videos spread. Most of the 4,898 people listed missing on Saturday will not come out walking. The four who have, in two days, are why the drills keep running.