MANDALAY: Rescuers pulled a woman alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment building in Mandalay on Saturday, AFP journalists saw, 30 hours after a devastating quake hit Myanmar.
Phyu Lay Khaing, 30, was brought out of the Sky Villa Condominium by rescuers and carried by stretcher to be embraced by her husband Ye Aung and taken to hospital.
“In the beginning I didn’t think she would be alive,“ Ye Aung told AFP as he anxiously waited for his wife — then buried in the rubble — to emerge.
“I am very happy that I heard good news,“ said the trader, who has two sons with his wife — eight-year-old William, and Ethan, five.
A Red Cross official told AFP earlier that more than 90 people could be trapped under the remains of the apartment block.
The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck northwest of Mandalay early Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.
The tremors destroyed buildings, downed bridged and buckled roads across swathes of Myanmar, with massive destruction seen in Mandalay, the country’s second-biggest city and home to more than 1.7 million people.
