Deadly earthquakes: notable survivals

PARIS, France - Rescuers kept up the search on Wednesday for survivors who defied the deadly odds after the January 12 earthquake which devastated Haiti, as the UN said 121 people had so far been saved.

More survivors were pulled out of the wreckage on Tuesday, a week after the quake which left at least 75,000 dead and 250,000 injured.

Cases of survival and rescue several days after earthquakes are not uncommon. Here are several cases where people were rescued from the wreckage more than five days after an earthquake took place.

- September 28, 1985, MEXICO: two infants are found alive in the rubble in their cots, nine days after an earthquake which killed 5,000.

- July 30, 1990, PHILIPPINES: three people are found alive in the ruins of a hotel destroyed two weeks earlier in an earthquake, in which more than 2,600 died at Baguio, 400 kilometres (249 miles) to the north of the capital. They were able to survive thanks to the seepage of water.

- August 23, 1999, TURKEY: a team of rescue workers pulls a three-year-old child from the ruins, six days after a quake which hit the north-west of the country, killing at least 20,000.

- September 26, 1999, TAIWAN: after a quake which killed almost 2,500 people, two brothers are plucked from the ruins in which they had spent more than five days, surviving by eating rotten apples and drinking their urine.

- February 5, 2001, INDIA: two victims of a quake in the western state of Gujarat are found alive in the ruins of their house, ten days after the catastrophe which killed 25.000. Rescue workers also found several survivors five or six days after the quake, including a 102-year old woman and a 12-month-old baby.

- January 7, 2004, IRAN, a 56-year-old man is pulled alive from the ruins, 13 days after a quake which killed 31,000 at Bam in the south-east of the country. He dies several days later. Four days earlier a 97-year-old woman had also been rescued.

- January 6, 2005, INDONESIA: a 70-year-old man survives for 11 days on the island of Sumatra having been stuck in the ruins of his house, which had been destroyed by the tsunami which killed more than 220,000 in south-east Asia.

- December 12, 2005, PAKISTAN: A 40-year-old woman is pulled alive from the wreckage of her house in Kashmir, two months after a quake which ravaged the region killing 75,000. She survived by eating rotten food and drinking drops of rain water.

- May 21, 2008, CHINA: a woman is found, trapped in a tunnel under a water power plant, nine days after a quake which ravaged in south-western region of Sichuan killing almost 87,000.

1 Response to "Deadly earthquakes: notable survivals"

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