A rescue team crouched under huge slabs of concrete and corrugated iron as they carefully slid 13-year-old Syailendra Haikal to safety from the twisted wreckage of a collapsed Indonesian boarding school; a brief glimmer of hope in the middle of a disaster.
Haikal was taken to hospital with moderate injuries, authorities said. But as the search at the Al Khoziny Islamic Boarding School in Sidoarjo, about 420 miles east of Jakarta, entered its fourth day on Thursday, Indonesian authorities made the agonizing decision to move from rescue to recovery.
The excavation process has been purposefully slow to avoid further collapse, and rescue forces have worked in shifts to carefully remove the debris.
Terrified mothers, fathers and loved ones have waited with bated breath, fearing the worst while praying for a miracle.
Teams have for days meticulously tunneled under the rubble, crawling on their hands and knees searching for signs of life, knowing the unstable structure could again buckle upon them.
Relief and despair have punctuated their daring rescue mission as they slowly extracted a small number of children, while desperate family members clung to the hope their missing loved ones might too be found.
“I kept saying, ‘Bismillah (in God’s name), my child is strong, my child is strong, my child is strong,’” Haikal’s mother Dwi Ajeng Tyasusanti told CNN affiliate CNN Indonesia on Thursday from the hospital. “Haikal made it out…. His (injuries) were only on the face, just some bruises on his legs.”
Hopes are now fading for dozens of their classmates who remain buried.
At least five people have died and 59 were still missing as of Thursday morning, authorities said.
Credit: cnn.com
