
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995                   TAG: 9507170134
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA                                LENGTH: Short

SHE SURVIVED WITHOUT WATER

The hole was not much bigger than his head, and the stench of rotting flesh was beginning to fill the hot air Saturday morning. But An Gung Wook squeezed his way inside, inching forward into the pitch dark, scraping with his hands at the steel wires and porous cement, which fell away in flakes.

After digging for more than two weeks in the rubble of the collapsed Sampoong department store, An, a rescue worker, was exhausted. As the death toll rose Saturday to 323 and hopes faded that any more survivors would emerge, An wondered whether the sounds he thought he heard were real. He called out for someone to respond to the beam from his light.

Suddenly the faint voice became stronger. After expanding the hole, An found himself face to face with Park Sung Hyon, a 19-year-old woman who had been trapped face down for 16 days under concrete slabs and crumbled boulders.

``I'm naked,'' she said, for she had peeled off her clothes to survive the heat. ``I'm not wearing any clothes. I want my mother.''

``What's important is that you are alive,'' he recalled telling her. But she moaned again, almost resisting, partly delirious from starvation.

``What happened to everyone else?'' Park asked. ``Please take me out of this place quickly.''

The discovery of Park astounded the medical community, which had believed that it was not possible for people trapped in rubble to survive so long without water. She said she did not drink any water.

Her survival may help lead to new calculations about how long rescuers must persist in searching for survivors after earthquakes, building collapses and other disasters.

by CNB