Cheers as pregnant woman lifted to safety
For Zhang Xiaoyan, an eight-month pregnant woman trapped in the collapsed ruins of her flat for more than 50 hours after Monday's earthquake, the only comfort was her anxious husband touching her hair as he waited for her to be rescued.
She was finally lifted out from the ruins amid cheers yesterday afternoon. Ms Zhang was in stable condition - a feat in itself - considering how long she had waited.
She survived amid the rubble of a collapsed six-storey building in Jingguan Road in Dujiangyan that also buried an unknown number of residents, including her parents.
'We have already named my baby,' said Pan Yuncheng, the father-to-be, who had been trying in vain to free his wife. Ignoring his own personal safety, he had used a ladder to climb up the debris and removed some rubble. But he couldn't do enough.
Mr Pan was away from home at the time of the quake and was shocked when he saw the whole building had collapsed. They lived on the second floor, and his wife was trapped in a space of less than a metre when the floor above came down. He said he could reach only her head with his arm, handing her food and water through a small hole.
As he waited impatiently for help, he said: 'All I can touch is her hair. That's the only comfort I can give her.'
But the wait for help dragged on, and Mr Pan said no officers had come to help until yesterday, when experts arrived to figure out a safe way to rescue the buried.
'We had been offered no assistance, and we had to tolerate the bitter wind and rain all night outdoors,' he said.
The government moved Mr Pan and his family into the apartment in 1999 when their old homes were demolished to make way for a new development. He grumbled that while all the other, privately built, apartments next to them were unaffected, theirs fell apart instantly. He suspected the building was shoddily built.
