April 30--REPORTING FROM KATMANDU, Nepal -- With the help of Los Angeles firefighters, rescuers Thursday pulled a teenage boy from the wreckage of a nine-story Katmandu hotel that collapsed around him five days ago when an enormous earthquake shook Nepal.
Pemba Lama, 15, was carried out on a stretcher, his face covered in dust. Medics had put an IV drip into his arm and a blue brace had been placed around his neck. He appeared stunned and he blinked in the sunlight, but had no serious injuries.
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FOR THE RECORD
4:06 a.m.: An earlier version of this article gave the rescued boy's name as Pemba Tamang. He is Pemba Lama.
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Horrific hallucinations
In an interview from an Israeli field hospital, the teenager appeared frail but sounded stoic as he recounted his long ordeal in the debris pile.
Pemba, who has a tattoo of the Hindu god Shiva on his arm, said he suffered from horrific hallucinations.
"There were times when I thought I was dead, and then I would wake up again to find myself beneath the rubble," he said. "I survived on ghee [clarified butter] that I found in a bottle there, scraping until the last dollop to feed myself."
Nepalese rescue teams had been using a bright orange excavator to clear rubble at the site when they heard a yell.
"I saw something bright outside as the excavator moved the rubble around me, and then I screamed for help," Pemba said.
The team treating him at the Israeli medical camp in Chhauni, Katmandu, was surprised to find him not just alive but in such good condition.
"This is nothing short of a miracle to find him alive after five days and that too with no major injury; he was only dehydrated," said Dr. Sakhi Dagan, who was overseeing Pemba's treatment.
Search for more children
When the earthquake began, Pemba, a hotel employee, recalled, "I hurried downstairs from the cash counter when I felt the strong tremors.... After that everything came crashing down."
He said he didn't remember anything after that until several hours later, when he woke up and found himself in the rubble.
Narayan Thapa, the on-scene commander for Nepal's Armed Police Force, said rescue workers were continuing to search for two other children who Pemba had said were trapped in the debris. Pemba told authorities he had been able to speak with the children, a girl of about 6 and a boy age 12 or 13, until about 4 a.m. Thursday.
Rescue teams from the Los Angeles County Fire Department and Fairfax County, Va. -- deployed as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development's disaster assistance response -- were using listening devices and dogs to try to find the children.
First live rescue for team
Chris Schaff, a battalion chief with the Fairfax County Fire Department, said this was the first live rescue the U.S. teams had conducted since arriving in Nepal.
"It gets a little discouraging near the end" of the survival window, he said, "so it was great to be able to assist the Nepali rescue team on this."
Search team manager Andrew Olvera, a fire captain normally based in Palos Verdes, said he arrived at the scene around 9:30 a.m. The Nepalese forces did not have cameras, he said, though they did have "breaching and breaking" tools such as jackhammers and saws.
The U.S. team was able to insert a camera and determine how to most efficiently and safely extricate the teenager, Olvera said, emphasizing that it was a cooperative effort with dozens of Nepalese on scene.
Laxman Bahadur Basnet, the Nepalese police officer who crawled into a gap in the rubble to reach Pemba, said the teen was surprisingly responsive.
"He thanked me when I first approached him," Basnet said. "He told me his name, his address, and I gave him some water. I assured him we were near to him."
Basnet said that when he reached the teen, the boy began singing to him, "You are a god who has come to me to try to save me."
Clearing the obstacles
The route to the teen was blocked by a motorbike, and above him was a heavy metal shutter. Basnet said that as he tried to extricate the boy, the shutter began to fall. He said he propped it up with a little jack.
Rescuers eventually used more jacks to lift the concrete slabs that had wedged Pemba in, Basnet said. He and his colleagues had been working at the site for four days.
Twisted ropes of steel reinforcing rods were all that stopped huge concrete slabs from falling onto the scene. Two concrete floors hung down in front of the building like curtains.
"He was a very fortunate young man," Olvera said. "He obviously has a strong will to be in there six days and come out talking to us."
The USAID disaster assistance response team, or DART, consists of 57 personnel from Fairfax, 57 from Los Angeles and 12 search dogs, six from each county.
"I feel fortunate the U.S. government has brought us around the world to utilize our skills and help people," Olvera said.
Rare bit of good news
Pemba was one of two people reported to have been pulled alive from the rubble Thursday, a rare bit of good news in a city that has known little but despair since the earthquake hit five days ago, leaving more than 5,800 people dead across this impoverished Himalayan nation.
A woman in her 20s was rescued in the evening near Katmandu's main bus terminal, the Associated Press reported, citing police.
On Tuesday, a French team pulled a 27-year-old man alive from another building in Katmandu.
Thirty-two teams from 15 countries, comprising 1,200 specialists, have been sent to Nepal since Saturday.
But on Wednesday, a senior Nepalese army officer, Brig. Gen. Davendra Bahadur Medhasi, urged in a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs that the foreign squads be sent home because he said there was no chance of finding survivors.
Thapa, the police commander, said such a suggestion was premature. "We can find more people," he said. "It depends on the willpower of the people. We can still find people on the seventh, eighth, even ninth day."
As the afternoon wore on, the search continued for the other two reportedly trapped victims. Occasionally, an eerie hush fell over the site as authorities asked for complete quiet so the listening devices would not pick up stray sounds.
Though hope remained for the children, the smell of rotting flesh pervading the site indicated that bodies were buried under the debris.
Pemba, from Nuwakot district, about 50 miles west of Katmandu, said he came to the capital a few years ago as his mother was about to leave for a job in the Middle East; many Nepalese work abroad to send money home.
"I first worked as a bus conductor for a few months before starting work at the hotels in Katmandu," he said.
He indicated that he was no longer very close with his family, and said he had never been to school.
Even after the ordeal, his mind still seemed to be focused on getting back to work.
"I want to be able to work again soon," he said, "but I don't know."
Rai is a special correspondent.
UPDATE
1:50 p.m.: This article was updated with the death toll exceeding 5,800.
10:20 a.m.: This article was updated with the reported rescue of a woman in her 20s.
4:02 a.m.: This article was updated with quotes from the boy. Also, his name was corrected; he had originally been identified as Tamang, but his name is Lama.
3 a.m.: This article was updated with details from Basnet.
1:37 a.m.: This article was updated with details from the scene.
1:28 a.m.: This article was updated with details from the scene.
1:05 a.m.: This article was updated with the L.A. County Fire Department's participation.
12:53 a.m.: This article was updated with the boy's name and other details.
This article was first posted at 12:19 a.m.
