Iran quake victim found alive after 13 days
A 57-year-old man has been pulled from the rubble of Iran’s earthquake, barely conscious but still alive because he had a source of water during the 13 days he was buried.
“It’s a miracle,” said Dr Mahdi Shadnoush, the chief physician at the Ukrainian field hospital where the man named Jalil, who is now unconscious, was being treated after searchers rescued him last night.
“He had no access to food, only water.”
Shadnoush was unsure where the water had come from but said the ruins of a home where Jalil was found were wet. Shadnoush said that the case was difficult to explain scientifically – but water apparently would have been the key. People rarely survive being buried under earthquake rubble for more than three days.
Jalil was conscious enough to mouth out his name to searchers who dug him out of the rubble, but he slipped into a coma after just a few minutes, said Mohammad Reza Tahmasebi, who is in charge of the Ukrainian hospital. Doctors were unsure about Jalil’s prognosis.
“We hope to save his life,” Shadnoush said. “A medical team is looking after him. We are constantly checking his condition. We hope to keep him alive, but we cannot guarantee it.”
Jalil is from the town of Narmanshir, 37 miles outside Bam and had travelled there on December 25 for medical treatment.
He spent the night at his sister’s house, where he was buried by the 6.6-magnitude earthquake that struck the next morning, flattening much of Bam and killing more than 30,000 people.
Authorities were trying to find Jalil’s relatives in Narmanshir so they could take them to Bam.
Tahmasebi said Jalil was a member of the Baluch ethnic group, known for tolerating harsh conditions.
Searchers found Jalil after other residents alerted them to an area where they thought a body was still buried.
