An astounding rescue story has emerged in the wake of Indonesia’s strong tremor on Monday – which devastated the West Java town of Cianjur.
In a video captured on Wednesday, it can be seen that a six-year-old boy is being pulled out from the rubble. The boy reportedly spent two days trapped under debris without food or water.
Jump To
Rescue provides hope
The remarkable rescue has now provided hope to the locals that survivors could still be pulled out from the debris caused by the strong earthquake that claimed at least 271 lives.
“Once we realised Azka was alive everybody broke into tears, including me,” 28-year-old local volunteer Jeksen told AFP on Thursday.
“It was very moving, it felt like a miracle,” he added.
Click Here: Argentina Rugby Shop
The video shows the workers pulling the boy Azka free from a destroyed home in Cianjur’s worst-hit district of Cugenang.
The boy can be seen donning the same blue shirt and trousers he wore before he got trapped.
The man who pulled him out of a hole cut in the debris clasped him in both arms.
Another rescue worker in an orange hard hat ran after them to hold the boy’s hand, footage released by the administration of West Java’s Bogor district showed.
Azka, who goes by one name per Indonesian practice, was later shown calmly sipping a drink held by a soldier as another emergency worker stroked his hair.
Azka lost mother, grandmother
It has come to light that the boy’s mother succumbed to the earthquake, and her body was discovered hours before Azka’s rescue.
The boy was found next to his dead grandmother, Jeksen told the news agency.
“He was found on the left side of the house, on a bed. He was protected by a pillow and there was a 10-centimetre gap between him and the concrete slab,” said Jeksen.
“We didn’t expect him to still be alive after 48 hours, if we knew we would have tried harder the night before,” he said.
“For all the years since I became a volunteer, I’ve never seen anything like this. How can you not cry?” he exclaimed.
Azka is currently being treated at a makeshift hospital, even though his wounds are said to be minimal.
170 aftershocks recorded
As per a Reuters report, more than 170 aftershocks, including a 3.9 magnitude tremor, were recorded on Wednesday afternoon.
“Because the quake was quite strong and raining, we feared there would be landslides. But we have continued the evacuation process now,” Henri Alfiandi, chief of the search and rescue agency, told Reuters.
Reportedly, 12,000 army personnel were deployed on Wednesday to bolster search efforts by police, the search and rescue agency and volunteers.
Nearly 62,000 survivors had been moved to shelters.
Most sought protection under makeshift shelters that the torrential rain had lashed, and Tarpaulin-covered tents protected only a few. The experts attributed the damage to factors like the shallowness of the quake and the lack of earthquake-resistant buildings and roads. Rural Cianjur district is home to more than 2.5 million people -including about 1,75,000 in its main town.
In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra island in western Indonesia triggered a giant tsunami that impacted 14 countries on the coastline of the Indian Ocean. It killed 2,26,000 people, more than half of them in Indonesia.
(With inputs from agencies)
For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit Indiatimes News.