45 days after a major earthquake in Lushan County, Ya'an City, Sichuan Province, on April 20, two pigs were found alive at a construction site in Xueshan Village of nearby Baoxing County, Ya'an City.

When the earthquake hit the village, one barn next to the original site of village committee collapsed. There were four six-month-old pigs, each weighing in at some 88 pounds, living in the barn at that time and their owner assumed they had not survived. After the earthquake however, a rescue team had detected signs of life at the site through the use of life detectors. Nevertheless, the villagers did not believe there were any people buried alive on the site and therefore never dug up the area.

In early June, the weather in Baoxing County had taken a turn for the better. At around 8 a.m. yesterday, Li Deming and his construction team headed to the site of the village committee to clear the wreckage.

The clean-up came with its risks.

"Stones roll down from the top of the hill every now and then," Li said. "All of us want to knock off work early."

At noon, the construction team came across the remains of two pigs.

"We thought the other two pigs had also died."

Around 1:40 p.m., when the construction team was moving a lopsided precast slab, some workers realized the stones next to the slab to be moving a little bit.

"We were almost scared to death," Li said. "We thought there was someone buried under the ruins."

After we stopped the excavator and moved the stones away, we spotted a pig's ear. A still living pig then appeared in the gap.

Li and other workers moved the stones and the precast slab, and tried to lure the pig out with pigweed. Their attempt failed. They then opted to pull it out by its ear.

Li then realized there was another pig stuck inside the little space and together with his colleagues pulled it out.

"You could hardly call them pigs," Li said. "They were just skeletons. Each weighed 55 pounds at most."

One of the pigs' noses looks terrible; the animal could hardly stand up. On seeing the pigweed, both pigs hungrily dug in.

"It's a miracle," Li said. According to him, when the precast collapsed during the earthquake, it leaned against a wall and thus formed a little space underneath. The space was really small. The two pigs were trapped inside and could not move at all. For this reason, they didn't expend much energy. During their 45 days of entrapment, they sustained themselves by eating dirt and drinking rain water.

"Like us, pigs do not want to die," Li said. "They have companions. They can talk to each other when bored."

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)