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| Pemba Tamang, 15, recovers at the Israeli field hospital for earthquake victims after being rescued in an operation led by a Nepalese team with American responders from the U.S. Agency for International Development assisting them, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Thursday, April 30, 2015. Crowds cheered Thursday as Tamang was pulled, dazed and dusty, from the wreckage of a seven-story Kathmandu building that collapsed around him five days ago when an enormous earthquake shook Nepal. |
KATHMANDU, Nepal
(AP) -- The 15-year-old boy had been buried alive under the rubble
of this quake-stricken capital for five days, listening to bulldozers
clearing mountains of debris, fearful the incessant aftershocks might
finally collapse the darkened crevice he was trapped in.
And
then, "all of the sudden I saw light," Pempa Tamang said, recounting
the moment Thursday he was pulled from a hole at the bottom of what was
once a seven-story building in Kathmandu.
Tamang did not know whether he was alive or dead. "I thought I was hallucinating," he said.
The
improbable rescue was an uplifting moment in Nepal, which has been
overwhelmed by death and destruction since the 7.8-magnitude earthquake
hit Saturday. By late Thursday, the government said the toll from the
tremor, the most powerful recorded here since 1934, had risen to 6,130
dead and 13,827 injured.
After night fell,
police reported another dramatic rescue: A woman in her 20s, Krishna
Devi Khadka, was pulled from a building in the same neighborhood as
Tamang near Kathmandu's main bus terminal, according to an officer who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to
the media.
"Life has become a struggle to
survive. It gives us hope," said Hans Raj Joshi, who watched Tamang's
rescue. "We thought they were only bringing out the dead. It's hard to
believe people are still alive."
When Tamang
was finally extricated, rescue workers inserted an IV in his arm,
propped him onto a yellow plastic stretcher - the same kind that has
helped convey countless dead - and carried him through the ruins on
their shoulders as if he was a newly crowned king.
Lines
of police stood on both sides, keeping back mobs of bystanders and
journalists. A dazed Tamang, wearing a dark shirt with the New York
Yankees logo and the words "New York Authentic," blinked at the bright
sky.
When the procession turned a corner and
entered the main road outside, there was a sound Kathmandu hadn't heard
in days: the jubilant cheers of thousands of ecstatic onlookers.
Nepal,
however, is far from normal. More than 70 aftershocks have been
recorded in the Himalayan region by Indian scientists in the past five
days, according to J.L. Gautam, the director of seismology at the Indian
Meteorological Department in New Delhi.
Shortages
of food and water and worry over the fate of relatives have triggered
an exodus from the capital, prompting thousands to board buses provided
by the government to their rural hometowns.
"I
have to get home. It has already been so many days," said Shanti
Kumari, with her 7-year-old daughter, who was desperate to see family in
her home village in eastern Nepal. "I want to get at least a night of
peace."
Although small shops have begun
reopening, and the once ubiquitous tent cities have begun thinning out,
an air of desperation remains. "We're still feeling aftershocks. It
still doesn't feel safe," said Prabhu Dutta, a 27-year-old banker from
Kathmandu.
Some residents have begun returning
to work, including at Dutta's bank, but he said it was impossible to
concentrate. "We roam around the office. We only have one topic of
conversation: the earthquake."
Tamang's dark
hair was disheveled, and he looked weak and tired but otherwise fine as
he recounted his story in an Israeli field hospital.
When
Saturday's quake began at 11:56 a.m., Tamang said he was having lunch
with a friend in the hotel where he worked. As he ran downstairs, they
shook. He saw walls cracking, ceilings caving in.
He
was in the basement when "suddenly the building fell down. I thought I
was about to die," he told reporters. Tamang fainted, and when he
regained consciousness, he could see little but darkness.
He was buried face down in a tiny crevice deep in the rubble. He was terrified.
For
days, Tamang survived on two cans of ghee, or clarified butter. He
rested his head on chunks of concrete and broken piece of corrugated
aluminum roof.
One Nepalese team had begun
combing the rubble in Tamang's neighborhood, a place they had found
another survivor Monday. They cried out and knocked on broken concrete
slabs, and then listened closely for any response.
Mostly there was silence. But when an officer named L. Bahadu Basnet, shouted "Is anyone there?" he was shocked to get a reply.
"Who is there? Brother, I am here!" Tamang shouted weakly back from a hole in the ground.
The
team used a jack to help support the rectangular entrance, and Basnet
took off his helmet, put on a headlamp, and crawled on his arms 10 feet
(3 meters) inside, pushed in by his colleagues.
He
could see Tamang wedged lying down in a crevice behind a motorcycle,
and was shocked how responsive he was. "He thanked me when I first
approached him," Basnet said. "He told me his name, his address, and I
gave him some water. I assured him we were near."
It
took a few hours to carefully clear the way for Tamang to be lifted
out. Members of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Disaster
Assistance Response Team brought in equipment to help and lowered a
pole-mounted rotatable camera into the hole, said one of the team's
members, Andrew Olvera.
Looking at a pair of
huge, ripped concrete floors hanging precariously like curtains on the
side of the destroyed building, just above the rescue site, Olvera said
the operation was dangerous. But, "it's risk versus gain. To save a
human life, we'll risk almost anything."
At
the Israeli field hospital, doctors X-rayed Tamang and injected him with
glucose. Lt. Libby Weiss of the Israeli Defense Forces said he was
dehydrated but lucid and "in remarkably good shape," with no other
injuries except scratches.
"It's a miracle," Weiss said. "I think it's an amazing thing to see in the midst of all this calamity."
Naryan
Pandey was standing on the main street outside when a dazed Tamang was
carried on the stretcher, blinking at the sky in a dark shirt with the
New York Yankees logo and the words "New York Authentic."
"I'm
surprised he's still alive. We've seen dead bodies coming out of the
rubble for five days," Pandey said. "But it doesn't change what we are
going through. I've barely eaten. We don't have enough water. I'm
hungry."
And then he added, eyeing the rubble beyond: "My friend is still in there. He was a cook. He's still there."
