Russian infant rescued after nearly 36 hours in icy rubble

MOSCOW — Laboring through sub-freezing temperatures, Russian rescue workers were digging into a sprawling heap of jagged rubble from a collapsed apartment building when one heard the faintest sound.

It was the sound of life. On Tuesday, they pulled a baby boy out of the rubble alive, nearly 36 hours after the disaster that blew apart his home. His father called it “a New Year’s miracle.”

The building collapse in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk before dawn Monday has killed at least nine people, and more than 30 people who lived in the building have still not been accounted for.

The collapse followed an explosion that was believed to have been caused by a gas leak.

The boy, an 11-monthold named Ivan Fokin, was in serious condition, officials said, with fractures, a head injury and suffering from hypothermia after his ordeal in temperatures around minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

He was flown to Moscow late Tuesday in an attempt to save his life. Although Ivan’s prospects for survival appeared dire, “it’s a New Year’s miracle,” his father, Yevgeny, was quoted as saying by the RT satellite TV channel.

The father was at work when his wife phoned to say the building had collapsed. She escaped with her 3-year-old son, reports said.

In separate disasters, seven people died in a house fire in the town of Orsk. In Moscow, the mayor fired the director of the city’s renowned Gorky Park after 13 people were injured when a wooden pedestrian bridge packed with New Year’s celebrants collapsed.

RUSSIAN MINISTRY FOR EMERGENCY SITUATIONS Emergency workers pull a baby to safety from a collapsed section of an apartment building Tuesday in Magnitigorsk, a city of 400,000 about 870 miles southeast of Moscow.