A three-year-old girl buried in the rubble of an earthquake-triggered landslide in northern Japan was declared dead yesterday, the day after rescuers pulled her younger brother alive from the wreckage.
Workers were still struggling to free Mayu Minagawa's body from the car where she, her mother and her brother were buried in Saturday's 6.8-magnitude earthquake, but they had confirmed that she was dead, Tetsuya Hasebe of the Niigata Prefectural government said.
"It's so sad," he said.
The death, together with that of a 48-year-old woman in an unrelated incident, brought the toll in Saturday's quake to 34.
Workers saved two-year-old Yuta on Wednesday in a dramatic rescue broadcast live on national television. Shortly afterward they retrieved Takako Minagawa, 39, from the driver's seat but she was declared dead at a hospital. Officials said the impact of the crash killed her almost immediately.
The team worked through the night to reach Mayu in hopes of finding her alive, but were having trouble yesterday because she was deeply lodged inside the van, which lay at a steep incline, officials said.
An unidentified rescue crew member told public broadcaster NHK that the boulders virtually demolished the van, adding that workers had moved slowly because there was a risk that removing rocks blocking the path to Mayu might set off a mini-landslide.
Yuta happened to find a 1m high opening under the boulders where he kept relatively warm for four days, even in the late October chill.
Officials at Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital later said the boy was suffering from dehydration, hypothermia and a large gash on his head, but was in stable condition. NHK quoted the toddler telling his father that he drank milk in the car, and he asked for melons and water at the hospital.
In the four days since Saturday's quake, the Meteorological Agency recorded 526 aftershocks strong enough for people to feel.
Agency official Masahiro Yama-moto warned that a magnitude-6 aftershock could hit the area within three days, urging residents to stay away from damaged buildings.
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