Baby rescued from rubble
Russians pull infant from collapsed building in New Year ‘miracle’
MOSCOW: Russian rescuers pulled a baby boy hurt but alive from the ruins of an apartment building where he spent the night in subzero temperatures after a gas explosion that killed at least 21 people.
With dozens of inhabitants still missing, authorities identified the 10-month-old boy as Ivan Fokine, and said he had been reunited in hospital with his mother, who also survived the ordeal.
“A New Year’s miracle has occurred!” Russia’s emergencies ministry said in a statement that named the young survivor of Monday’s tragedy in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, nearly 1,700km east of Moscow in the Ural mountains.
The boy was found in his cradle after rescuers heard him crying from under the rubble. He was brought to his mother and then flown to Moscow for treatment.
Russian television showed footage of the boy lying in a hospital bed watched by his tearful mother.
Medical officials in Moscow said he was in serious but stable condition after suffering from severe frostbite, a head injury and multiple fractures.
Emergency services posted a video of rescuers slowly prising apart concrete panels of the collapsed nine-storey building’s edifice and pulling out the baby, who can be seen blinking, before running with him wrapped in a blanket to an ambulance.
Ivan was found after rescuers had paused a search for survivors for fear that the rest of the block could come tumbling down.
“The rescuers heard crying,” Chelyabinsk regional governor Boris Dubrovsky wrote on the Telegram messenger service.
“The baby was saved by being in a cradle and warmly wrapped up.” Ivan survived temperatures that
27° fell overnight to around - C, the TASS news agency reported.
The Soviet-era apartment block had been home to about 1,100 people.
The blast destroyed 35 apartments and damaged 10 more, according to authorities.
Residents left homeless are being housed in a nearby school.
Twenty-one people have been confirmed dead, according to the emergencies ministry.
Six people were found alive, among them a 13-year-old boy, and 20 remained unaccounted for.
Battling freezing temperatures, rescuers had worked throughout the night on New Year’s Eve, combing through piles of mangled concrete and metal and trying to stabilise what remains of the walls.
The regional government announced a day of mourning for Jan 2, with flags lowered and entertainment events cancelled in a country where New Year’s Eve celebrations are an annual highlight. — AFP