Two Pulled Alive From Debris Five Days After Nepal Earthquake

Kathmandu, Nepal: Five days had passed since an earthquake devastated Nepal, and rescue teams had largely given up hope of finding anyone else alive among the piles of brick and broken concrete in Kathmandu. Then on Thursday, in a part of the city dense with cheap hotels and shops, rescuers turned off a mechanical shovel and - in the relative silence - heard a cry.

In the mess lay a 15-year-old hotel worker, Pemba Tamang. A team of rescuers from the United States offered the Nepali crew a camera that was snaked through the debris. It showed the teenager trapped under a metal shutter. A concrete slab was poised above him - held up by a flattened motorcycle.

"He was trapped in a 2.5-foot-tall by 3.5-foot-wide area behind the motorcycle," said Chris Schaff, a battalion chief with the Fairfax County Fire Department from Virginia who was on the U.S. team. "He wasn't being crushed; he was just pinned."

The problem was that the concrete slab was unstable and a threat not only to the teenager, but to the rescuers themselves, since it hung over the area where the men had to dig.

"It was the most concerned I've ever been about people under my command," Schaff said.

Despite the dangers, eight Nepali rescuers and two Americans continued to dig. As the news spread that someone might be rescued, residents, who have lived in fear as the city was battered by aftershocks, rushed to the scene, desperate for good news. The crowd swelled to several hundred, with people lining the roadway and craning for a glimpse from a nearby footbridge.

Dozens of Nepali soldiers also clustered around the site, apparently eager to be part of a proud moment after days of hardship, and amid frustration from citizens who accuse their government of ineptitude.

For the renowned U.S. search-and-rescue team, the task was a chance to finally save someone, after a dispiriting day Wednesday in the nearby city of Bhaktapur. There, people had hoped the rescuers could unearth bodies for a proper burial, but the team's mission is to find the living.

When Tamang was finally lifted out, cheers rang out from the throng of onlookers witnessing one of what might be the last rescues in a terrible week. Tamang's face was covered in dust and a brace had been placed around his neck. He told rescuers that he had managed to find ghee, or clarified butter, in his tiny enclosure, and it had sustained him. He was then taken to an Israeli field hospital in surprisingly good condition.

A woman at another site was also freed from the rubble during the day, after being trapped next to three people who had died.

The rescues were among the rare bits of good news on an otherwise dreary and rainy day during which the enormousness of the tragedy continued to sink in. The death toll has exceeded 5,800, with many more confirmed deaths expected.

Although aftershocks continue, the terrible weather seemed to have persuaded an increasing number to leave the tent cities set up throughout the city. Bus service to Nepal's more remote villages began again Thursday, with the government promising free rides. And flights between some of Nepal's smaller cities and Kathmandu resumed.

Officials announced Thursday the creation of a National Reconstruction Fund to rebuild infrastructure, and the government said that it would pay families almost $1,400 for each person who died as a result of the quake to help defray funeral costs and other expenses. The government's top tourism official announced that climbs of Mount Everest may resume, if climbers decide to go ahead. Many of the climbers who had hoped to summit Mount Everest have left, and at least 19 were killed when a massive avalanche triggered by the earthquake swept through the base camp.

But the rescues were the news of the day.

At a news conference, Bill Berger, who is heading rescue efforts for the U.S. Agency for International Development, spoke of how extraordinary it was to save people beyond the "golden" hours after a quake when the likelihood of finding survivors are best. That period, he suggested, usually ends after three days.

"We had a really good day. Actually we had a great day," he said. "Members of our urban search and rescue team were able to pull a live victim out of a pile, and I think for us and the Nepalis, given us new hope in a dire situation."