Rescuers pulled a 15-year-old boy alive from the rubble of Nepal’s earthquake yesterday, bringing a rare moment of joy to the ruined capital, Kathmandu, five days after a disaster that killed more than 5,500 people.
The rescue of Pemba Lama, who stayed alive by eating jars of ghee [clarified butter], was hailed as a miracle by medics and met with cheers from crowds of bystanders who massed to watch the drama unfold.
However, the recovery of another teenager’s body from the same ruins only minutes later underlined how the prospects of finding further survivors of Saturday’s magnitude 7.8 quake were becoming more remote.
Photo: Reuters
His face caked in mud and dust, Pemba was fitted with a neck brace and hooked up to an intravenous drip before being lifted onto a stretcher and then raced to a field hospital.
“I don’t have any logical explanation. It is miraculous. It is a wonderful thing to see in all this destruction,” Libby Weiss, a spokeswoman at the Israeli military-run facility, told reporters. “He was under the rubble for 120 hours and it is certainly the longest we have heard anybody of being under the rubble and surviving. We understand he didn’t have any food and just two jars of ghee, which he had at the time he was under the rubble. He was triaged, but remarkably, speaking with us, fully conscious and was able to communicate, and doesn’t have any major injuries or wounds. He is doing remarkably well.”
The rescue operation at a collapsed guesthouse in the Gongabu district, a joint effort between Nepal’s Armed Police Force (APF) and USAID, was fraught with risks.
“The area was very narrow. We used our tools and dug him out. We asked: ‘Is anyone inside?’ and we heard a ‘dhuk dhuk’ sound and kept searching,” L.B. Basnet, one of the Nepalese rescuers, told local television. “He was behind a bike, we had to cut through it, and we pulled him out successfully. This was very good, very good.”
Launching an appeal for US$415 million in aid, the UN said it would be take a marathon effort to help the people of one of Asia’s poorest countries.
In its latest situation report, the UN said that search and rescue was still limited outside of the Kathmandu Valley and warned it could take days to trek to some of the worst hit areas in remote regions.
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