Rescuers yesterday pulled at least four survivors from a building that collapsed in mudslides 10 days ago, while officials raised the known death toll from storms that devastated the Philippines' northeast to at least 842. More than 750 people are missing.
The four survived by drinking "any kind of liquid that dripped" from the rubble that entrapped them, said Maria Tamares, 49, who was pulled out alive together with her three-year-old granddaughter and two teenage boys in Real, about 70km east of Manila.
PHOTO: EPA
Covered with blankets and lying on makeshift stretchers, they were immediately flown to a hospital in nearby Lucena city in a military helicopter after being given sips of coconut water.
"We felt like we were entombed between heaven and earth," Ta-mares said in a phone interview. "There was nothing but darkness. I thought our time had come."
Tamares and the others apparently had been trapped in the kitchen of a two-story building that was buried under piles of mud on Nov. 29, when the worst of two back-to-back storms battered the region, causing massive landslides and flash floods.
About 40 miners volunteering in the Real search heard voices in the rubble of the building and used sledgehammers, torches, hacksaws and bolt cutters to punch a hole through the thick concrete roof to reach the survivors.
"After waking up one time, we heard some pounding above us and we yelled, 'Help us, help us, we're alive in here,' and they found us," Tamara said from her bed at a military hospital in Lucena. "It was a miracle. Thank God he gave us a second life."
She said she and the others perspired profusely in the extreme heat of the tiny, pitch black crevice.
As rescue crews continued to pick their way through debris, the Office of Civil Defense raised the number of confirmed deaths from the storms by 102 to 842. It said 751 people were still missing.
Colonel Pablo Amisola, spokes-man for the military's Southern Luzon Command, said that soldiers, who were also assisting, "heard voices and they peeped through a hole and they saw at least 20 survivors." But he later said the reports of the sighting were unconfirmed.
In Manila, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called the rescue of the four "a miracle" and said soldiers and volunteers would continue to search.
"They've been able to rescue some of them, so I'd like to thank God for that miracle and they are continuing to dig deeper to see if they can rescue any more," she said.
"We will continue our recovery efforts until in our judgment those that we have to recover have all been recovered," said the military's Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Efren Abu.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS