Miracle quake survivor: "At times I felt that I was already dead"
KATHMANDU, Nepal -- Americans worked alongside Nepalese rescuers Thursday to try to reach a voice coming from the rubble of Saturday's earthquake in Nepal.
They were trying to extract a trapped teen without causing the hotel teetering above them to topple.
Finally, 15-year-old Pemba Tamang emerged -- in a New York Yankees T-shirt -- to chaos.
He was finally free 120 hours after the earthquake.
We'd been following the elite U.S. Agency for International Development's Disaster Assistance Response Team all morning.
"Until the person's found and we can confirm that they are not" alive, said Andrew Olvera, a veteran of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, "we will give it every shot, and we are hoping that they are."
Moments later, Olvera got the call and took off running.
The rescue would take several more hours before the hundreds who'd gathered could cheer.
"This is a great feeling, it's a great feeling," said rescuer DB Kunwar. "You feel like you won a war, you know. To save a life is a great feeling."
On Thursday evening, we found the 15-year-old survivor at an Israeli-run field hospital.
"I'm not on the land," he told us. "I'm up in the sky."
As he snacked on Oreos, he explained how he'd survived eating a buttery-type food he found called "ghee."
"At times," he told us, "I felt that I was already dead."
"It's amazing to see somebody be freed," said Olvera. "It's amazing to be part of that. It is a miracle."
And in an otherwise grim landscape, it's a glimmer of hope.
