BOGO: Rescuers have been filmed pulling a trapped Philippine earthquake victim from rubble using only their bare hands in a desperate nighttime operation.
Dramatic footage showed Dante Pianar with his face and upper body caked in cement, his lips bloodied and his tattooed right arm twisted and pinned beneath his collapsed house.
The 28-year-old local government employee pleads for help in the local Cebuano language shortly after the 6.9-magnitude quake struck near Bogo city.
“My arm is broken… please help me. We were hit by the earthquake. I hope you can help me, friends, I am trapped,“ he says in the video.
The footage was uploaded early Wednesday to his Facebook account and has since been viewed at least 3.8 million times.
Two relatives can be seen frantically pulling away slabs of concrete and steel bars pinning down Pianar’s entire lower body.
They tug at his blue shirt in a failed attempt to free him during the rescue effort.
His wife Leonie Grace Bolambao, who is two months pregnant, told AFP the couple had gone to bed early and were buried under rubble in their bedroom.
Pianar was taken to hospital in Cebu city to treat his broken arm following his rescue.
Bolambao suffered minor injuries and later returned to her parents’ undamaged home after receiving medical attention.
“I fainted and couldn’t respond for a long time. When I got to the hospital, I couldn’t even speak. I was just in shock. I lost my ability to talk,“ she said.
“Dante’s arm can’t move anymore because a wall fell on him. We never expected our house to collapse. Our home is badly damaged, nothing’s left of it.”
Similar rescue operations played out across Bogo and nearby towns throughout Wednesday.
At the collapsed Condor Pension House in downtown Bogo, around 200 people watched and waited for hours as firefighters worked to winch up a person found beneath the rubble.
A woman was later recovered dead from the pension house collapse, but two other victims remain missing.
“We’re racing against time. We are talking about life here. As responders, as rescuers, we are hoping that we can bring them out alive,“ senior fire officer Erwin Castaneda told AFP.
The Tuesday night earthquake killed at least 69 people across the affected region. – AFP