Name: Pemba Tamang Personal Information: 15 year old teen Memorable Quote: “No one could hear me so I stopped shouting”
After the walls around his room collapsed in Saturday’s earthquake, Pemba Tamang was not sure if he was dreaming or already dead. Trapped under two metres of rubble, the 15-year-old sat crouched and unable to move for 120 hours. He sucked sweat from his clothes and ate what remained of his lunch to survive.
“I knew it was an earthquake,” Tamang told the Guardian on Friday. “But then I thought it was a dream. I don’t know if I’m still dreaming.” Initially, trapped in the ruins of the Kathmandu hotel where he worked, he tried calling for help. But after two days he gave up, thinking no one would come. “No one could hear me so I stopped shouting,” he said.
Eventually someone did come. Tamang was dug out of the rubble by a US-assisted Nepalese rescue team on Thursday. He is recovering at an Israeli military-run medical facility in the Nepalese capital, walking slightly hunched and with a limp. He has minor bruises and scrapes to his face and limbs but no serious injuries. Doctors think he will be discharged soon. But Tamang has no home to return to. He used to live at the guesthouse, now a pile of bricks and lumber. When he is discharged he’ll leave with his father. But even his home collapsed in the earthquake that has destroyed more than 90% of buildings in rural areas.
“My home is destroyed,” Surya Tamang, Pemba’s father, said. “We now live in a tent with the rest of the family. But I’m so happy my son is alive and that no other members of my family members were hurt.”
On the same day, the Nepalese army and experts from France, Norway and Israel rescued a second survivor from the ruins. Krishna Devi Khadka, 30, was also taken to the Israeli field hospital and is in a critical condition.
Stories like Tamang’s and Khadka’s have been rare in the days after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that has killed more than 6,000 and injured thousands more, according to the UN. There have yet to be more reports of people being trapped under rubble for five days and surviving.
Mostly bodies have been pulled from beneath collapsed buildings. At first, survivors overwhelmed local and international medical staff, but now there are fewer new patients.
“The first day we saw 300 and the second day we saw 200,” Brig Gen Dr Bragendra Srivastava said. “Altogether, we have seen 896 people, and we had 153 admitted until this morning, but we are in the process of sending them to IDP camps. Today we received 30 people. So the number has dwindled.”
Srivastava says they have enough supplies and doctors, but the earthquake damaged hospital infrastructure, leaving operation and recovery rooms unsafe. And, as rescue teams begin to reach more survivors in areas outside Kathmandu, space for new patients may become scarce.
“We have 750 beds, but we can only use 115 because of cracks in the building,” Dr Rajesh Kishor Shrestha, of Nepal Medical College, said. ‘We are not able to run the operation table because there are multiple cracks. We are only running an emergency area.
Name: Aleah Crago Personal Information: 10 month old baby Memorable Quote: "You could hear the windows blow out and the house came apart and it just kind of picked me up and threw me down."
Survivor's Story:
It's a day most Oklahomans will never forget; May 3, 1999, the largest and most destructive outbreak of tornadoes our state has ever seen.
But the most memorable image from that terrible day may not be a tornado at all.
"It was a typical day. Nice, sunny," Amy Crago recalled.
Within a matters of hours, things drastically changed; history-making storms stirring up above the Oklahoma plains.
"You could hear the windows blow out and the house came apart and it just kind of picked me up and threw me down," said Crago. "And then I lost her."
Then 19-year-old Crago is talking about her 10-month-old baby, Aleah; ripped from her arms by mother nature's monster. Fearing her precious girl was dead, Crago frantically tracked down Deputy Robert Jolley and begged him to find little Aleah while she was rushed to the hospital.
Hours went by. Then a nurse asked Amy, "'Are you the one missing a 10-month-old baby?"
"And my heart just dropped," Crago said. She then asked where her baby was.
That 10 month old was alive. Deputy Jolley found her about 100 feet from her leveled Bridge Creek home, face down in the mud. "I think she survived by the grace of God," said Crago. "That's the only way."
Name: Jonathan Waldick Personal Information: 18 month old baby Memorable Quote: "I think I see a foot"
Survivor's Story:
The tornado splintered the wood-frame home and grabbed 18-month-old Jonathan Waldick.
But the deadly twister seemed to have a change of heart when confronted with a child. The same winds that had snatched Jonathan snapped the top off a nearby oak and deposited him in its protective branches.
There the baby lay nestled safely in his mattress while around him the world seemed to be coming to an end. Hail and rain pelted the ground. The concrete house next door crumbled. Giant trees snapped.
And Jonathan got a bump on his head.
But Shirley Driver didn't know that. She was sleeping in her bed with Jonathan's 4-year-old sister, Destiny, when the storm hit. She is the children's great-grandmother and was taking care of them.
Driver woke up to find Destiny safe, but where was Jonathan? It appeared the awful answer was under the huge pile of debris. Word of the tragedy spread. At Lakeview Elementary School in St. Cloud, which was an emergency shelter, tornado survivors talked about a baby whisked out its mother's arms and into the sky.
Ron Vernelson, who was helping his son next door, came over to help search for Jonathan. Other rescuers also arrived. "We started looking, but there was no bedroom," he said.
After combing through rubble for 40 minutes, one of the men spotted something at eye level in the oak branches. "I think I see a foot," he said.
They investigated, and they soon saw the rest of Jonathan. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn't making a sound. He's dead, said a deputy.
Then, the foot moved. "I kept calling his name, and he started to whimper," Vernelson said. "I said, `The baby is alive.' "
Another volunteer - a slimmer man - slid through the tangled mass of boards and limbs to pull Jonathan out. "The mattress saved him," Vernelson said. "He was just lying on the mattress sideways."
Name: Shelton Alexander Personal Information: Poet
Name: Giorgia Galassi Personal Information: Student Memorable Quote: "Everything crumbled and I could not understand a thing."
The avalanche completely buried the hotel at about 17:00 (16:00 GMT) on Wednesday. Many of the guests had gathered on the ground floor to await evacuation following earthquakes early that day. "Everything crumbled and I could not understand a thing," she told Italy's Corriere della Sera. When she came round, she realised that the lobby had turned into a dome with four caverns. She thought the hotel had been displaced and planted deeper into the earth. "It was pitch dark. Not a sound came from outside. Our voices echoed." She heard a woman who called for her fiance, and another man from Rome who had injured his arm and was in pain. A mother who had her boy with her and hugged him close whilst calling out to locate her daughter.
"All the children behaved really well, I never heard them crying, " Giorgia says. She did, however, many times. And she was full of praise towards her fiance, "who never had any doubt". "He supported us all. Sometimes he would hum a song to soothe us." Giorgia told how they had had nothing to eat. "Nothing. The only thing we ate was ice. We had a lot and this kept us going." "I lost count of time, and still haven't got it back. But I think it lasted two days, maybe a bit more," Georgia said. In all, she was trapped for 58 hours.
At 11:00 (10:00 GMT) on Friday, a mechanical sound was heard, then human voices. To which she replied: "I am Giorgia, and I am alive." "It was the most beautiful thing I've ever said."
Italy has seen a wave of damaging earthquakes in recent months. The Apennines region saw three magnitude six tremors between August and October. It is believed that the geological stress is spread across a number of fault lines in Italy's mountain ranges - with recent earthquakes as the result.
Name: Martunis Personal Information: 8 year old Memorable Quote: "Everything crumbled and I could not understand a thing."
Martunis was eight when he was found alive, stranded in a swampy area near the beach, 21 days after a giant tsunami hit and devastated Indonesia's northern province Aceh on December 26, 2004. His survival story made him famous, not only because of his nearly unbelievable experience, but also because he was wearing a fake Portugal national soccer shirt. Martunis was playing soccer with his friends in his village of Tibang about 7 km north of the provincial capital Banda Aceh when the magnitude 9.3 earthquake struck Aceh.
He went home to check on his family, but was swept away by the tsunami that followed the quake. The earthquake - which unleashed 1,500 times as much energy as the Hiroshima atomic bomb - and the tsunami that followed killed about 220,000 people in 14 countries around the Indian Ocean. In Aceh alone, 170,000 people were killed or unaccounted for.
Martunis' mother and two sisters were among those missing, caught in the tsunami in front of his eyes. He clung to a school chair, then a mattress, then a big log and finally a sofa as he was pulled into the ocean and then deposited in the swamp by the returning waves.
For 18 days, surrounded by bodies, Martunis, who could not swim, survived on packs of instant noodles, bread, soft drinks and bottled water washed out to sea and floating around him.
"I was not afraid at all at that time because I still wanted to be alive to meet my family and to be a football player," Martunis said. By the 19th day, no food or water was washing up any more, leaving the boy dehydrated and near death when someone found him and delivered him to a British television journalist.
The journalist took Martunis to a Save the Children staff member who got him to hospital.
Martunis, wearing the Portugal team shirt, appeared on television screens across the world and attracted the attention of soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, then playing for Manchester United in England. A member of Portugal's national team, Ronaldo raised money to rebuild the house where Martunis now lives.