After 13 days of burial, he breathes

BAM, Iran - A 57-year-old man was pulled from the rubble of this earthquake-shattered Iranian city, barely conscious but still alive after 13 days thanks to a nearby source of water.

"It's a miracle," Dr. Mahdi Shadnoush said Thursday of the rescue of the man, identified only as Jalil. "He had no access to food but only water."

It was not known how he got water, but the doctor said the ruins of the home where he was found were wet.

A sense of normalcy was slowly returning to Bam as hundreds of workers cleared the main streets, banks opened and street lights were kept lit, even in the day, to demonstrate the improving situation since the 6.6-magnitude quake hit on Dec. 26, killing more than 30,000 people.

Searchers found Jalil late Wednesday after people alerted them to an area where they thought a body was buried. He was able to mouth his name to the rescuers before losing consciousness, said Mohammad Reza Tahmasebi, administrator of the Ukrainian field hospital where Jalil was being treated.

By Thursday evening, his condition had improved.

"He is almost conscious now," said Shadnoush, chief physician at the hospital. "From time to time, he opens his eyes and he is breathing smoother now."

"His health is subject to change. We are more hopeful now to keep him alive," Shadnoush said.

People rarely survive being buried under earthquake rubble without food or water for more than three days. On Saturday, a rescue team found a 97-year-old woman alive, buried in her home for almost nine days.

An Associated Press reporter saw Jalil, bruised and covered with white cloth on a hospital bed, with tubes connected to his mouth and nose.

Jalil was from Narmanshir, a town 35 miles outside Bam and came to the city the day before the earthquake for medical treatment.

Hundreds of municipal workers from the capital, Tehran, and other cities worked Thursday to clear Bam's streets.

"Our job is to lessen the hardship survivors in Bam have gone through and provide them with a sort of temporary relief: beauty and tidiness," Yousef Salehi said, as he swept a square in central Bam.

Banks were open, although the buildings were damaged.

"We are offering every service to the survivors, who mostly withdraw their remaining money from their accounts to meet their urgent needs," said Hossein Nekouei, a clerk at Melli Bank.

Many nations have provided aid to the devastated city, including medical personnel and supplies, but the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies put out an appeal Thursday for $42-million to help Bam recover.

"The scale of the disaster is so great that emergency relief will be required for several months to come," federation president Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro said. "The people of Bam need adequate shelter, food, health services and sanitation for the foreseeable future. If they don't get this, we risk seeing epidemics developing and more suffering and heartache."

The federation estimated 75,000 people were homeless, with thousands sleeping outdoors in freezing nighttime temperatures.

At the same time, the U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland launched an appeal on behalf of nine U.N. agencies for $29.4-million in emergency aid.

"We urgently need this amount to meet the basic needs of the survivors for the next three months," Egeland told reporters in Bam.

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