UN warns that worst-hit areas still days away
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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 which killed more than 5,500 people.
The rescue of Pemba Tamang, who told reporters he stayed alive by eating ghee, was hailed as a miracle and greeted with cheers from crowds of bystanders who massed to watch the drama unfold at a ruined hotel.
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 earthquake were becoming more remote.
A second survivor, a kitchen worker in her 30s, was later pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hotel in the capital. Rescuers took 10 hours to pull her to safety.
Caked in dust, Pemba was fitted with a neck brace and hooked up to a drip before being lifted onto a stretcher and taken to a field hospital where he was found to have minor cuts and bruises.
“I never thought I would make it out alive,” he told reporters at the Israeli military-run facility where he was being kept for observation.
Pemba, who worked at the hotel as a bellboy, said he had been eating lunch n when the ground started shaking.
“I tried to run but... something fell on my head and I lost consciousness. I’ve no idea for how long,” he said.
“When I came round, I was trapped under the debris and there was total darkness.
“I heard other people’s voices screaming out for help around me ... but I felt helpless.”
Asked if he had had anything to eat while he was trapped, Pemba said he had come across a jar of ghee (clarified butter) in the dark.
Libby Weiss, a spokeswoman at the field hospital, said Pemba was doing “remarkably well.” “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,” she said.
“I don’t have any logical explanation. It is miraculous. It is a wonderful thing to see in all this destruction.”
While Pemba appeared to have emerged from his ordeal largely unscathed, a man rescued on Tuesday after being trapped for 82 hours was coming to terms with having his leg amputated.
Speaking to reporters from his hospital bed, Rishi Khanal, 28, recounted how he had given hope of being found alive and felt that he had been given “a second life” but worried about how he would now fend for himself.
“I thought I would work, I would earn. How will I after this?” said Khanal. He had been on his way to a new job in Dubai when he was caught up in the quake.
Launching an appeal for US$415 million in aid, the UN said it would take a marathon effort to help the people of one of Asia’s poorest countries.
In its latest situation report, it said that search and rescue was still limited outside of the Kathmandu Valley and warned that it could take days to trek to some of the worst-hit areas in remote regions.
“Some villages can only be reached by foot with some areas taking up to four to five days to reach,” it said.
Around 70,000 houses have been destroyed and another 530,000 damaged across 39 of Nepal’s 75 districts, the UN said.
The latest official toll puts the number of dead at 5,582 and more than 11,200 are known to have been injured. More than 100 people were also killed in neighboring countries such as India and China.
Although the number of aftershocks since Saturday’s quake has subsided, fresh tremors were felt in Kathmandu overnight.
Some people who had spent the past four nights camped out in the open for fear of aftershocks spent their first night back home.
But a significant number are still living on the roadside or open ground, in the ruined capital, which is normally home to some 2.5 million people, including many migrant workers.
“I don’t know how long we are going to do this. How long can we live on the street?” said Rajina Maharjan after another night camped out in a tent outside her house with her husband, in laws and a 4-year-old son.
Hundreds of thousands of residents have fled the city, fearing aftershocks and wanting to inspect the damage back in their families’ villages.
Signs of normal life were returning to Kathmandu yesterday, with shopkeepers opening, some for the first time since the quake, and vendors laying out produce at devastated Durbar Square.
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