Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 28, 1990 TAG: 9007280309
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BAGUIO, PHILIPPINES LENGTH: Medium
The man and woman were in surprisingly good condition, doctors said. The man said a beam missed his head by inches. He was found lying near the bodies of four people.
Rescuers and spectators cheered as Luisa Mallorca, a cleaning woman, was pulled from the wreckage of the Hyatt Hotel about 9:50 p.m. Arnel Calabia, a security guard, was recovered about an hour later. Their ages were not given, but they appeared to be in their 20s or early 30s.
As dawn broke today, miners combed the hotel for other survivors. They pulled two male bodies from amid the debris.
At least 18 people who were in the Hyatt during the July 16 quake are still unaccounted for. Foreign rescue teams gave up searching last week, convinced no survivors would be found.
Calabia said he, Mallorca and a male employee were on the third floor of the hotel when the quake, measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale, struck. All three dived under tables "and then the ceiling fell in," he said in a radio interview.
"We recovered consciousness later and we called out to each other," Calabia said.
The three lay in the dark, talked to each other and prayed, Calabia and Mallorca said. The male companion had suffered serious injuries and died about four days ago.
Mallorca said the man complained of thirst in his final days and became delirious. "He said: `I'm very very thirsty. I want a cold Coke. Go to my wife and ask for money and buy us a Coke,' " she said on the radio. "The following day he was still asking for a Coke. I told him, `Don't think about it, just pray.' "
The man finally fell silent.
"I convinced myself he was not yet dead," Calabia said. "I told him I would cover his face because rain was dripping down."
"I was OK where I was, but I realized just a while ago that there was a concrete slab above my forehead," he said. "Just a few more inches and I would have been dead too."
Calabia and Mallorca are employees of the state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., which operated a casino in the 12-story hotel.
The two were being treated at Baguio General Hospital. Doctors said both suffered cuts, bruises and severe dehydration. Calabia told reporters his right hand was injured and that nurses told him three fingers might have to be amputated.
Mallorca complained of chest pains, rescuers said.
Attempts to look for other survivors were slowed by a fire, touched off Thursday night by acetylene torches used to cut through the steel and concrete. The ruins still smoldered Friday.
Although foreign teams abandoned their search efforts, local miners and other volunteers had vowed to keep looking until all the missing were accounted for.
Jacinto Benayan, one of the miners, said they stepped up the search Thursday after hearing cries of "Help us! Help us!" After boring for five hours, they reached the hotel elevator shaft and found Mallorca pinned beneath a beam. Calabia was found nearby.
In October, a California longshoreman was pulled from beneath tons of wreckage of an Oakland freeway that had collapsed four days earlier in an earthquake.
Buck Helm had suffered injuries to virtually every organ in his body when his compact car was crushed under Interstate 880. He died 28 days after his rescue, which came after workers had given up hope of finding more survivors.
The Hyatt was one of eight hotels that collapsed during the July 16 earthquake, the strongest to hit the Philippines in 14 years. Baguio, a mountain resort 130 miles north of Manila, was one of the cities hit hardest. Nearly 400 people died there.
According to the latest figures, the earthquake left at least 1,653 people dead, 1,000 missing and presumed dead, 3,000 seriously injured and 110,000 homeless.
Also Friday, air force chief Maj. Gen. Gerardo Protacio ordered gunships and rocket-firing planes to escort helicopters carrying relief supplies to villages stricken by the quake. The order follows guerrilla attacks on two helicopters.
by CNB