Quake Survivor, 97, Found Under Rubble in Iran

Rescue workers Saturday pulled a barely injured 97-year-old woman from under a collapsed building where she had been trapped nine days after a powerful earthquake that razed this city.

“God kept me alive,” Sharbanou Mazandarani said from a makeshift hospital.

Search dogs located Mazandarani, and it took three hours of digging to pull her out. Rescuers said furniture protected her from collapsed masonry.

People typically can survive as long as three days under the rubble of an earthquake. It was unclear whether Mazandarani had food or water while trapped.

“No one expected her to be alive. It’s a miracle,” provincial government spokesman Asadollah Iranmanesh said.

Mazandarani asked for a cup of tea when she emerged, then complained that it was too hot, rescuers said.

Despite the good news, the official death toll rose to about 35,000, Brig. Gen. Hoseyn Fatahi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps told Iran’s official news agency.

The death toll has varied according to differing estimates of how many bodies are still under the rubble and of thousands of unregistered burials.

A United Nations situation report warned that many survivors were suffering from psychological problems after the deaths of loved ones and the destruction of their homes.

On Friday, a U.S. field hospital here operated on a young Iranian soldier who tried to commit suicide by shooting himself after discovering the quake had wiped out his family.

The quake, whose magnitude has been recorded as high as 6.6, damaged beyond repair as much as 85% of Bam’s buildings, according to the U.N. report. Heated tents were being erected.

Bill Garvelink, head of the U.S. relief team in the southern Iranian city, has said the destruction was worse than in any quake zone he had ever seen.

“It’s incredible,” he said. “Bam is literally a rubble pile.”