TOKYO--Sumi Abe, and her grandson Jin Abe, 16, were trapped in the kitchen when their two-storey house collapsed around them in the devastated coastal city of Ishinomaki.
The boy told doctors he was able to reach the fridge and had fed his grandmother on yogurt, bread, Coca-Cola and water, and stayed close to her to keep her warm. He eventually climbed through a small hole on to the collapsed roof of the building and shouted for help.
He was heard by passing police officers who called a rescue team. After 45 minutes removing debris they reached the kitchen, where they found the elderly woman lying on top of a fallen cupboard and wrapped in blankets. She broke down in tears when rescuers reached her.
The grey-haired, bespectacled grandmother seemed stunned but coherent as she was placed on a stretcher and winched away by helicopter. When asked by rescuers if she was hurt, she said "No." The boy was said to be shivering and to have no feeling in one ankle when he was rescued.
The Japanese military had announced on Saturday that they found a man thought to have survived more than week in a half-destroyed house. But it later turned out the man was an evacuee who had simply returned to his home.
However, police seemed satisfied that the latest rescue was a genuine cause for celebration.
A police spokesman said: "An 80-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy were found under debris. Their temperatures were quite low but they were conscious. They have been rescued and sent to hospital."
It provided a rare glimmer of hope for rescue workers as the death toll from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami continued to climb.
Japanese police said 8,450 people had been confirmed dead and 12,931 were officially listed as missing – a total of 21,381 dead or missing.
Miyagi prefecture, the worst hit area, had a confirmed death toll of 5,053.
But the local police chief said he expected that to rise to more than 15,000.
Among the harrowing stories still emerging was the fate of 53 elderly people at a nursing home in Ofunato.
When the earthquake hit staff members rushed them into a courtyard using wheelchairs and stretchers, but they were then swept away by the tsunami, with carers helpless to stop what was happening.
More than a week after the natural disaster around 360,000 people are displaced from their homes and have taken shelter in evacuation.
The Save the Children charity said that included around 100,000 children along the north-east coast.
Spokesman Ian Woolverton said: "We found children in desperate conditions, huddling around kerosene lamps and wrapped in blankets. They told me about their anxieties, especially their fears about radiation
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, March 20th 2011 at 2:59PM
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