TOKYO — An 80-year-old woman and her teenage grandson were rescued Sunday in northeastern Japan when the youth was able to pull himself out of their flattened two-story house nine days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Jin Abe, 16, was seen calling out for help from the roof of the collapsed home in the hard-hit city of Ishinomaki, according to the Miyagi Prefectural Police. Like other homes in northeastern Japan, they had lost electricity and telephone service in the March 11 earthquake.
He led them inside to his 80-year-old grandmother, Sumi Abe. Both were conscious but weak, and had survived on the food they had in their refrigerator, said Shizuo Kawamura of the Ishinomaki police department.
The woman could not get out of the house because she has trouble walking, and the teenager, who was suffering from a low body temperature, had been unable until Sunday to pull himself from the wreckage, Kawamura told The Associated Press by telephone.
They were found by local police who realized they couldn't get the woman out of the collapsed house and had to call other rescuers, he said.
National broadcaster NHK showed video of the stunned but coherent woman being placed on a stretcher. She was able to give her name and told rescuers she had been in the house since it collapsed in the quake.
When asked if she was hurt, she said no.The police said they were trying to learn if there had been other relatives living in the house and their whereabouts.
NHK showed them being taken by helicopter to a hospital. Kawamura said that while the rescue was a reason for joy, the police had "too many other victims to find to take the time to celebrate."
The rare good news punctuated the traumatic hunt for bodies and missing people.
"This morning my next door neighbor came crying to me that she still can't find her husband. All I could tell her was, 'We'll do our best, so just hold on a little longer,'" fire brigade officer Takao Sato in the disaster zone said.
About 257,000 households in the north still have no electricity and at least 1 million lack running water. Food, water, medicine and fuel are short in some parts, and low temperatures during Japan's winter are not helping.