Buried tot survives earthquake

A wide-eyed Algerian toddler was lifted tenderly from the ruins of her family’s home, two days after a devastating earthquake killed more than 1,600 people.

The tiny survivor was found by rescuers who heard her plaintive cries, but her four-year-old sister died in the quake.

Miraculously, two-year-old Emilie Kaidi stayed alive beneath the shattered concrete of her collapsed ground-floor bedroom, sheltered by a door that fell across a television set.

A Spanish volunteer, wedged in a tiny hole in the rubble, handed the black-haired little girl dressed in a red shirt up to other rescuers. She did not have any visible injuries.

“It warmed our hearts and gave us hope,” said Amirouche Istanbule. a 38-year-old painter who witnessed the rescue.

Emilie’s parents also survived Wednesday evening’s earthquake that destroyed their home town, Corso, east of the capital Algiers.

However, her sister, Lisa, died in the ruins of the four-storey building where the family lived, another witness said.

Emilie “was traumatised but intact,” said Amar Boutihe, 46, a project manager with a construction firm who lives across the street from the Kaidi family. “When she came out, everybody had smiles on their faces.”

But “the mood really changed an hour later when they brought out her sister”, who was dead, Boutihe said.

Despite the dramatic rescue, workers said they were losing hope for finding more people alive after the 6.8-magnitude quake that killed more than 1,600 people and injured 7,207. The death toll was expected to rise, the interior ministry said.

Rescuers have stopped listening for voices of the living, and were instead being guided by the scent of decaying bodies, said Saa Sayah, a captain in Algeria’s civil protection unit.

“There is not much hope here,” he said in front of a collapsed four-storey building in the city of Boumerdes. “We have already pulled up four bodies, but we can’t get further inside.”

Emilie’s cries, and precision work by rescuers, saved her.

Rescuers asked for total silence as they inserted an ultrasound device into the wreckage to precisely locate her, Boutihe and others recounted. A half-hour later, Emilie was raised from the rubble.

“When they brought her out, she was covered in dust and a Spanish rescue worker immediately put his hand over her eyes to block out the light,” Istanbule, the painter, said.

The plight of others was far more bleak.

Villagers suffering from rising shortages of food, drinkable water and electricity accused the government of a weak response to the earthquake, and countries around the world rushed to fill the gap.

“We have only our hands and hammers,” said Ismail Lizir, 42, also of Corso. “It’s been nearly three days, and there has been no sign of local authorities.”

Villagers in destroyed towns like Corso said they lacked just about everything - food, medicine, blankets. Heavy machinery needed to dig survivors and bodies from the rubble was non-existent in many areas, townspeople said.

Some villagers said the lack of outside help inflated the death toll. Left to their own devices, townspeople struggled in vain to move huge slabs of cement with their bare hands or shovels, their dying loved ones just yards away.

However, prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia said in Algiers that heavy machinery could not be used as long as there was hope of finding survivors.

He announced 700,000 dinars (€6.200) in aid for each victim and housing for those whose homes were declared uninhabitable.

“Nobody has visited us, not even to establish a death count,” said Yoscef Manel, 34, who does odd jobs. ”Helicopters flew overhead and the interior minister drove through, but it’s noise for nothing.”

The government struggled to respond, moving dozens of ambulances, 3,000 police and security agents and electrical workers into the quake zone. The army brought in tents, ambulances and engineering equipment. Water trucks made the rounds to stricken villages.

The country declared a three-day mourning period yesterday.