KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) – For hours after Nepal was shaken by one of the most intense earthquakes here in nearly a century, 12-year-old Neha Chumda screamed for help.
She had been inside her family’s four-story villa in Kathmandu when the tremor struck unexpectedly Saturday. And in the life-or-death seconds that followed – when her home swayed at its walls began cracking apart – she and 11 members of her family rushed to get outside.
They all made it – except Neha, who was pinned in a room between the second and third floors, which had collapsed onto of each other.
“She was crying for so long, we tried to help her,” Transport Minister Tek Bahadur Garung said of the girl, who is the daughter of one of his cousins.
The cries turned faint, then ceased by the time Nepalese army troops and security forces began trying to break through the front of the house to pry Neha out at 4 p.m. Saturday. Then for a day and a half the soldiers used hammers, crowbars, shovels and a generator-powered saw and small jack-hammer to tear open the front of the house, then bust through the ceiling into the second floor.