6-year-old Indonesian boy rescued alive two days after earthquake; watch video

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Azka, a 6-year-old boy, was rescued alive this Wednesday night (22nd) by Indonesian emergency teams after spending two days under the rubble of his house, destroyed in the magnitude 5.6 earthquake registered in the archipelago on Monday (21st). ).

The episode surprised volunteers and government workers who, even accustomed to constant tremors in the country, located in a seismically active zone, reported never having come across a case of this type. The death toll reaches 271.

The tremor devastated the city of Cianjur, in the province of West Java, the most populous in the country. About 40 people remain missing, more than 2,000 were injured and 61,000 were displaced from their homes. At least 6,000 emergency workers were mobilized.

Azka survived two days without access to food and water. His mother’s body was found a few hours earlier in a nearby area. And, close to the boy, his grandmother’s body was also located. Azka was lying on a bed, with a pillow over his body. Only 10 centimeters separated it from a concrete wall.

“It was such a narrow space, it was dark and it was very hot; there wasn’t enough room to breathe,” said Jeksen, 28, a volunteer. “I’ve never seen anything like this, how could I not cry? It was a miracle”

The number is uncertain, but officials say many of those who died in the quake are children, who were at school or at home at the time of the quake. After 72 hours, emergency workers have little hope of finding more cases like Azka, who received medical attention as soon as he was found.

The boy lived in Cugenang district, one of the worst affected. There, rescuers are still trying to make their way through the concrete rubble of a crumbling building to find Cika, a 7-year-old girl.

Her mother, Imas Masfahitah, 34, told AFP that she was cooking at the time of the earthquake, and Cika was playing outside. Two villages on the island of Java are still isolated due to the blockage of land routes by rubble.

In addition to the search for survivors, the country is focusing on providing supplies, a task made difficult by landslides. The head of the country’s disaster mitigation agency, Suharyanto, said on Thursday (24) that many still had not received help and that about 200 volunteers had been mobilized to distribute water, food and diapers.

Many survivors crowd into military tents set up near devastated villages to receive aid packages. In the village of Sukamanah, residents told Reuters they were having to ration food. Ema Hermawati, wife of the village leader, reported that sanitation is lacking — garbage has started to accumulate, and there is no running water or chemical toilets.

Selina Sumbung, executive director of the NGO Save the Children in the country, says the Indonesian government has made recent progress in infrastructure projects, but in terms of preventive measures against earthquake damage, such as stricter construction rules, investment is scarce due to to decentralized governance.

“We are part of the G20, we are the largest economy in Southeast Asia, we have a lot of resources and a lot of capacity,” she told the American newspaper The New York Times. Days before the most recent tremor, the country hosted the G20 summit on the island of Bali.

President Joko Widodo returned to visit Cianjur on Thursday. On Twitter, he wrote that, since several victims remain buried, the process of removing bodies and, eventually, rescuing survivors, remains a priority for the State. “But we face obstacles such as rain and aftershocks that are still occurring.”

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