Man rescued from rubble – but hopes fade of finding more earthquake survivors
Thousands of people have died in Myanmar as the quake struck Myanmar and Thailand.
Rescue crews in Myanmar have pulled a 26-year-old man out alive from the rubble of the capital city hotel where he worked – but most teams are finding only bodies five days after a massive earthquake hit the country.
After using an endoscopic camera to pinpoint Naing Lin Tun’s location in the rubble and confirm that he was alive, the man was gingerly pulled through a hole in the floor nearly 108 hours after he was trapped in the capital Naypyitaw.
Shirtless and covered in dust, Naing Lin Tun appeared weak but conscious in a video released by the local fire department, as he was fitted with an IV drip and taken away.
State-run MRTV reported that the rescue was carried out by a Turkish and local team and took more than nine hours.
The 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck at midday on Friday, toppling thousands of buildings, collapsing bridges and buckling roads.
So far, 2,719 people have been reported dead and another 4,521 injured, but local reports suggest much higher figures.
The earthquake also rocked neighbouring Thailand, causing the collapse of a high-rise building under construction in Bangkok.
One body was removed from the rubble early on Wednesday, raising the death total in Bangkok to 22 with 34 injured, primarily at the construction site.
Myanmar has been wracked by civil war and the earthquake is making a dire humanitarian crisis even worse, with more than three million people displaced from their homes and nearly 20 million in need even before it hit, according to the United Nations.
Countries have pledged millions in assistance to help Myanmar and humanitarian aid organisations with the monumental task ahead.
Australia is providing another 4.5 million dollars (£3.4 million), in addition to 1.25 million dollars (£967,000) it had already committed, as well as a rapid response team on the ground.
India has flown in aid and sent two Navy ships with supplies as well as providing some 200 rescue workers. Multiple other countries have sent teams, including 270 people from China, 212 from Russia and 122 from the United Arab Emirates.
A three-person team from the US Agency for International Development arrived on Tuesday to determine how best to respond given limited US resources due to the slashing of the foreign aid budget and dismantling of the agency as an independent operation.
Washington said on the weekend it would provide two million dollars (£1.5 million) in emergency assistance.
Most of the details so far have come from Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, which was near the epicentre of the earthquake, and the capital Naypyitaw, about 165 miles north of Mandalay.
Many areas are without power, telephone or mobile phone connections, and difficult to reach by road, but more reports are beginning to trickle in.
In Singu township, about 40 miles north of Mandalay, 27 gold miners were killed were killed in a cave-in, the independent Democratic Voice of Burma reported.
In the area of Inle Lake, north-east of the capital, many people died when homes built on wooden stilts in the water collapsed in the earthquake, the government’s official Global New Light of Myanmar reported.
