Rescuers pulled a teenage boy and a woman in her thirties alive from the rubble of Nepal's earthquake on Thursday (Apr 30), as the Red Cross warned of "total devastation" in areas near the epicentre. The rescue of 15-year-old Pemba Tamang, who told AFP he stayed alive by eating a jar of ghee (clarified butter), was hailed as a miracle five days after the massive quake that has so far claimed nearly 6,000 lives.Crowds of bystanders massed to watch the drama unfold at a guesthouse in the capital of Kathmandu, greeting the teenager with cheers as he emerged from the ruins of the building.
Caked in 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 where he was found to have only minor cuts and bruises. "I never thought I would make it out alive," the teenager told AFP at the Israeli military-run facility where he was being kept for observation.Pemba, who worked at the guesthouse as a bellboy, said he had been eating lunch next to reception 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," he added. "I heard other people's voices screaming out for help around me ... but I felt helpless." The recovery of another teenager's body from the same area underlined how the prospects of finding further survivors of Saturday's 7.8-magnitude quake were becoming more remote.
Libby Weiss, a spokeswoman at the Israeli field hospital, said Pemba was doing "remarkably well", confirming he did not have any major injuries."He was under the rubble for 120 hours and it is certainly the longest we have heard of anybody being under the rubble and surviving," she told AFP. "I don't have any logical explanation. It is miraculous. It is a wonderful thing to see in all this destruction."
Just hours later, a team pulled a kitchen worker in her thirties named Krishna Devi Khadka from the rubble of another hotel just streets away, to loud appreciation from the multinational team of rescuers who had worked into the night to save her.
Emergency workers from France, Norway and Israel operating with the Nepal army and using listening devices to find survivors took 10 hours to free Khadka once they had discovered her. "She was injured but she was conscious and talking," a Nepal army major told an AFP reporter at the scene. "It is as though she had been born again."
Rishi Khanal aged 27, is carried out by a French rescue team .
Khanal found himself buried under the debris of a five-storey Kathmandu guest house, pinned to the ground by fallen rubble and forced to drink his own urine, as he shouted for help and waited for more than three days to be rescued. Khanal was finally rescued after more than seven hours of drilling into the rubble by a French and Nepali rescue team, was rushed to the hospital with a severed leg. His three friends died in the quake.
Khanal found himself buried under the debris of a five-storey Kathmandu guest house, pinned to the ground by fallen rubble and forced to drink his own urine, as he shouted for help and waited for more than three days to be rescued. Khanal was finally rescued after more than seven hours of drilling into the rubble by a French and Nepali rescue team, was rushed to the hospital with a severed leg. His three friends died in the quake.