Rescue teams in Myanmar pulled a 26-year-old man alive from the rubble of a hotel in the capital on Wednesday morning, but most teams were only finding bodies five days after a massive earthquake hit the country.
PUBLICIDAD
After using an endoscopic camera to locate Naing Lin Tun’s position among the debris and confirm that he was alive, the man was carefully extracted through a hole drilled in the floor and placed on a stretcher almost 108 hours after getting trapped in the hotel where he worked.
PUBLICIDAD
Shirtless and covered in dust, Naing Lin Tun appeared weak but conscious in a video posted by the local fire department, as they placed an intravenous drip on him and took him away.
The state-run MRTV reported that the rescue in the city of Naypyidaw was carried out by a Turkish and local team and took more than nine hours.
Death toll in Myanmar surpasses 2,700.
The magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck on Friday at noon toppled thousands of buildings, collapsed bridges, and twisted roads. So far, 2,719 deaths and 4,521 injuries have been reported, but local reports suggest that the numbers will be much higher.
The earthquake also shook neighboring Thailand, where it caused the collapse of a tall building under construction in Bangkok. One body was removed from the rubble early Wednesday, bringing the total deaths in the Thai capital to 22 with 34 injured, mainly at the construction site.
Myanmar has been ravaged by a civil war and the earthquake is worsening an already severe humanitarian crisis, with over three million people displaced from their homes and nearly 20 million in need even before the earthquake occurred, according to the United Nations.
Most of the reports so far have come from Mandalay, the second largest city in Myanmar, which was near the epicenter of the earthquake, and from the capital Naypyidaw, about 270 kilometers north of Mandalay.
Many areas still lack electricity, phone service, or cell phone connections, and are difficult to reach by road, but more news is starting to come in.
In the municipality of Singu, about 65 kilometers north of Mandalay, 27 gold miners died in a collapse, reported the independent group Democratic Voice of Burma.
In the area of Lake Inle, northeast of the capital, many people died when the houses built on wooden stilts in the water collapsed in the earthquake, reported the government’s official Global New Light of Myanmar without providing specific figures.