Nepal eartquake: 101-year-old man rescued alive

[webfact]

101-year-old man rescued alive

KATHMANDU (AFP) - A 101-year-old man was taken to hospital after being found alive in the grounds of his home in Nepal seven days after it collapsed in a deadly earthquake, police said Sunday.

Funchu Tamang was rescued on Saturday with only minor injuries and airlifted to a district hospital, local police officer Arun Kumar Singh told AFP.

"He was brought to the district hospital in a helicopter. His condition is stable," said Singh in Nuwakot district, around 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu.

"He has injuries on his left ankle and hand. His family is with him."

Police had initially said that Tamang was trapped under the rubble of his home ever since the quake struck on April 25, but they later said he was in fact rescued from his garden where he had been sheltering since the disaster.

"We are far from the place where the 101-year-old man was rescued. It is very hard for us to communicate well among each other," Singh said on Monday.

"The rescue is the prime duty and it does not matter now whether security personnel pulled him from rubble or a garden."

In an interview with AFP on Monday, Tamang said that he was under the rubble for several hours before his daughter-in-law rescued him.

"I don’t know if it is luck but I am a strong man ... I work in the field and I walk every day," he said from his hospital bed, confirming his age as 101.

Police rescued three women from under rubble on Sunday in Sindupalchowk, one of the districts worst hit by the quake, although it was not immediately known how long they had been trapped.

One had been buried by a landslide while the other two were under the rubble of a collapsed house.

"They are being taken to hospital for treatment," said Suraj Khadka, an officer with the Armed Police Force in Kathmandu.

The rescues came despite Nepal’s government on Saturday ruling out finding more survivors buried in the ruins of Kathmandu.

Multiple teams of rescuers from more than 20 countries have been using sniffer dogs and heat-seeking equipment to find survivors in the rubble of the capital.

But outside the city search and rescue work has largely been carried out by local police and troops.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/101-year-old-man-rescued-alive-30259302.html


-- The Nation 2015-05-04